Going Beyond Schools: Learning Management Systems For Individuals And Businesses

Learning management systems (LMSs) are being used in online education and integrated into blended learning environments more and more every day. In the education sector, the advantages of using an LMS are numerous and well known: they provide a centralized space for all of a course’s materials, resources, and activities; students can access the course materials at any time and using various devices; students can collaborate with each other, submit assignments, and receive feedback; instructors can track students’ progress and identify when additional support is needed; and so on.

In the past LMSs could cost $50,000 to $100,000 or more, which made using them cost-prohibitive for all but the largest and most well-funded universities and organizations. Now, however, that trend is changing. A host of new cloud-based LMS software packages are available, some free and others on a low-cost subscription basis. With the costs under control, small organizations and even individuals can use LMSs to deliver courses and training programs online.

LMSs offer many advantages for businesses, even small businesses—not only for training employees, but also for keeping them updated on the latest products and trends. Here are some major reasons organizations should consider using an LMS in their training programs:

• Cost savings. This is the number one reason many organizations move from traditional instructor-led training (ILT) to eLearning. Putting programs online saves money associated with travelling to deliver or receive training. In today’s climate, as many companies continue to decrease their learning and development (L&D) budgets, saving money while continuing to deliver high-quality training is essential.

• Ease of use. In addition to having high upfront costs, LMSs of the past also required a good deal of work just to update and maintain. Organizations would need to hire in-house technicians or purchase an additional service package from the LMS vendor. In addition, they were very technically demanding to use, practically requiring a degree in computer programming just to operate. This is no longer true—today’s LMSs are very user-friendly, as are eLearning authoring tools in general, and anyone with basic computer literacy can design and publish a course online.

• Analytics. Recently, big data has become all the rage in pretty much every sector of business and society. LMSs allow organizations to collect their own L&D big data, as all aspects of training can be tracked, including employee engagement with training materials, progress through courses, and success on assessments.

• Informal learning. In business environments, informal learning, such as peer-to-peer learning and self-paced independent learning, is estimated to account for up to 70 percent of learning. That is a huge percentage, considering informal learning is not often accounted for in formal training programs. LMSs with social media integration, such as spaces for employees to discuss content and collaborate on projects, offer ways for instructors to monitor and assess informal as well as formal learning.

Elearning for large businesses has been around a long time, and eLearning for small businesses is expanding, but now individuals not associated with either schools or businesses are starting to get into the action. Recently, there has been a trend toward a new form of democratization—massive open online courses (MOOCs) have allowed anyone to become a student, and now low-cost, user-friendly eLearning development tools and online LMS software are allowing anyone to become a teacher. The DIY (do-it-yourself) movement and the popularity of peer-to-peer learning are turning subject matter experts everywhere into online instructors, and many websites allow individual users to create, and even sell, their courses online.

Education is no longer something that takes place solely in schools. People everywhere are demanding access to educational resources and materials, and a new wave of online learning management system software is working to respond to their needs.

Sameer Bhatia is founder & CEO of ProProfs.com which is a leading provider of online learning tools for building, testing, and applying knowledge.Sameer has a background in technology with a Masters in Computer Science from USC (University Of Southern California) and is an ed-tech industry veteran. You can find Sameer on Google+ .