An LMS (learning management system) is a digital platform that centralizes and streamlines the process of administering, delivering, and tracking educational content and training programs.
Today, more and more organizations – from schools and universities, retail stores and coffee shops, to billion-dollar enterprises – already use LMSs or are thinking about implementing one. Are you wondering what an LMS can do or how you can benefit from one? Then check out this comprehensive guide on LMSs to find out everything you need to know – and more.
Overview
What Are the Benefits of an LMS?
How to Organize Learning with an LMS
An LMS (learning management system) is a digital platform designed to make learning more efficient, manage users, and organize data. An LMS facilitates access to learning materials, allows administrators to oversee user activity and course details, and automates tasks like grading and reporting to streamline training processes. In other words, an LMS enables the comprehensive management of the entire learning process.
Let’s break down each component of the acronym and the very concept of an LMS:
An LMS is like your own online university where you can create, upload, store, and assign online courses for learners to access and take on PCs, laptops, tablets, or smartphones, in a browser, or via mobile app. It provides the option of online training, as well as the possibility of learning offline.
From your existing courses, ebooks, and videos, you can build an entire corporate knowledge base or establish specialized learning paths for given positions or employee groups, like new hires or franchisees.
The size and scope of organizations that leverage LMSs are pretty broad. They can be a large global enterprise with thousands of learners or a startup that uses an LMS for small businesses. And of course, there can be nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions that train a variety of audiences.
Here are just a few examples of people and enterprises that benefit from an LMS in their work:
Trainers in large global enterprises rely on a corporate LMS to onboard new employees, deliver compliance training, and foster professional development and technical expertise. They use learning management systems to monitor learners’ progress and personalize training content, enabling each learner to develop skills tailored to their specific job roles and needs.
Small business owners often use LMS solutions to provide cost-effective and standardized employee training. Whether it’s a retail store, a restaurant, or a tech startup, an LMS enables entrepreneurs to deliver consistent training materials and evaluate employee performance within a reduced budget. For example, companies that are short on resources to provide computers for staff training might employ an LMS for mobile learning. Employees can access training content via their smartphones to learn at a time and pace that’s comfortable for them.
Universities, extracurricular schools, K-12 schools, and other institutions employ LMS platforms to support both traditional learning and online learning environments. Teachers and professors use LMSs to distribute course materials, post quizzes and assignments, and engage with students in a collaborative learning setting.
Nonprofit organizations can leverage an LMS platform to provide training and educational resources to their staff and volunteers all over the globe (this is especially important for international NGOs). Program managers track the progress of volunteers working on various projects, ensuring they gain relevant skills and knowledge to contribute to the organization’s mission.
Government agencies use LMS systems to deliver training and compliance programs to their employees. It’s especially important to make sure that every member is up to date with current policies and regulations. LMS platforms help streamline the administrative processes involved in managing a large workforce, making it easier to track and report on training progress and compliance efforts.
There are a lot of obvious advantages of using an LMS both for businesses and learners:
| For businesses | For learners |
| Reduce training costs | Access learning content anytime and anywhere |
| Cut down the time needed for employee onboarding | Ensure increased engagement and a consistent welcome experience |
| Stay on top of compliance training and keep everyone up to date with the latest regulations | See higher compliance and workplace safety levels |
| Deliver quality product training at scale | Foster increased confidence in your sales associates and customer support specialists |
| Maintain a unified approach to marketing, sales, and customer service through channel partner training | Establish streamlined communication between partners and affiliates |
| Educate end users on product qualities or features with customer training | Boost customer satisfaction |
| Create individual learning plans at each stage of the employee life cycle | Improve work performance and create opportunities for promotion |
| Measure training effectiveness | Ensure knowledge retention |
You can see that these benefits of a learning management system create many training scenarios or situations where you can use it. Feel free to look into more cases and learn exactly how corporate LMSs can drive your business success.
Let’s move to a more technical part to discover what types of learning platforms exist and how they differ. Here’s a description of different types of LMSs:
Both corporate and academic LMSs provide access to course materials online and automate different aspects of training processes, but they have some differences:
Also read: → Best Corporate eLearning Platforms
When choosing between a free, open-source system and a commercial platform, you need to know that not all open-source LMSs are, in fact, free. There may be no license fee, but you may need to set up a server and a hosting architecture, customize certain features and branding, and regularly upgrade your system – so you need technical talent in your team to succeed.
The ideal solution for users without an IT background is commercial LMS software. It’s typically much easier to deploy and use, offers tech support services, and doesn’t incur additional costs.
You can either store all the data on your company’s own servers, thus hosting the system yourself, or you can select a SaaS LMS platform and leave it to your vendor to deal with server load, backups, and security. A SaaS platform is the best match if you don’t have IT staff in place and want to focus on creating learning content.
Some companies avoid cloud-based learning management systems because of data security concerns. They believe that their information that is stored on a remote server might become compromised. However, there are different ways to safeguard your data. For instance, ensure that the LMS vendor has effective encryption protocols and will back up your information.
If you’re going to build courses in-house, you can choose between two alternatives: either buy an LCMS with course-creating functionalities or purchase an LMS and an authoring tool separately.
However, here you can face two problems:
If you want to avoid compatibility problems and create beautiful interactive courses, choose an LMS with a bundled authoring tool like the iSpring Learn LMS that comes with iSpring Suite. This integration allows you to create professional-looking e-courses, easily upload them to the platform, and enjoy advanced reporting capabilities.
Selecting a unified standard for both eLearning authoring tools and LMSs means that information will be successfully shared between them.
Here are the five major LMS standards that predetermine the compatibility between an LMS and an authoring tool:
Now, let’s proceed to the next level of understanding of what an LMS is and explore it in terms of common features, tracking options, and pricing.
Also read: → SCORM Compliant LMS: How to Find an LMS That Checks All the Boxes
There’s no universal agreement on the full feature set of a standard platform, but you can think of the first three items on the list below as basic LMS features and the rest as advanced.
For more details about must-have and optional features, see this article about LMS requirements.
Learning management systems make it possible to track training progress with detailed LMS reports. The essential training metrics and reports typically include:
These metrics show how your learners are faring, and you can track how far they’ve come and see if they’ve completed the assigned courses successfully.
This metric helps you monitor skill and knowledge gaps as learners complete training courses, and see if they need more information on those topics.
Course overview reports show you what percentage of learners completed a course, how much time they needed to view each activity, and their average scores.
An LMS typically allows you to evaluate learner satisfaction by conducting user surveys, polls, and questionnaires.
When looking for a learning management system, you can’t avoid the financial aspect. To choose the best option for your business, see what pricing models exist and how they work.
Different LMS vendors prefer different pricing schemes:
| Pay per active user | Pay per learner | Pay as you go | License Fee / Subscription |
| You pay for each person who actively uses the LMS during each billing cycle. | You’re charged for a fixed number of learners, regardless of whether they are active or not. | You pay only for what you use – the actual users and the courses they take, for example. | You pay a monthly or annual license fee for the LMS. The price typically varies, depending on the features included. |
To know which method of payment suits you best, see a full comparison table of the most common pricing models with examples of LMSs that offer them.
If you perform an online search for “LMS,” you’ll get millions of results, many of which will be vendors promoting their products. It’s not easy to choose the best learning management system for your business when the options are so numerous. If you find yourself in a situation like this, the free white paper “How to Choose a Learning Management System” will come in especially handy.
This free white paper provides training managers and L&D pros with all the essentials needed to make an informed decision and match any kinds of requirements that the higher management and IT department might impose. Check it out and equip yourself with the knowledge of the best way to choose an LMS that will yield a great ROI with regard to training and professional development.
Let’s take the iSpring Learn LMS as an example to see how to organize training with an LMS.
iSpring Learn is a cloud-based service, so all that’s required to register an account is an internet connection and an email address.
To start training, you need to add materials to the LMS. The process of uploading content to iSpring Learn is similar to working with file-sharing services like Google Drive or Dropbox. Click the “Upload File” button and select the files from your computer.
The LMS recognizes ordinary PPT presentations, audio and video files, and text documents, as well as special SCORM courses. You can always combine them into a learning track to achieve a consistent flow – even with the most complex subjects – and set the required evaluation criteria.
Also read: How to Convert PowerPoint to MP4 Video on Windows & macOS
One of the most useful features is the ability to assign different user roles. In any LMS, there are 3 main user types:
With a high-quality LMS, administrators are freed from tedious tasks like manually adding users to the system, as most of the processes are automated. For example, you can invite learners by email or import a list from an XLSX file. You also can divide learners into groups, like “newcomers” and “pros,” or organize them according to their work areas: sales, security, or production, for instance.
After your content is uploaded and user roles are assigned, you’re ready to present courses to your learners in the most accessible manner. You can grant access to all users or invite specific individuals by email. Then, learners can take courses on multiple devices, including tablets and smartphones. With the free mobile app by iSpring Learn, they can study when and where they want: at home, in a café at lunchtime, while commuting, or even when offline.
The ability to measure training effectiveness is one of the main reasons more and more companies are getting started with LMS platforms. You can track the progress of all of your learners in real time and see detailed statistics on time spent, attempts made, and more.
An LMS trial is a key part of choosing which platform you’ll ultimately go with. You need to experience several LMSs and their feature sets firsthand to eliminate those that don’t suit your needs and pick the right LMS. Once you’ve chosen the platform, you can develop your learning or training program with the LMS’s functionality in mind, maximizing the opportunities that it provides.
If you want to find out if training with an LMS is right for you and your company, take advantage of the free 30-day trial of iSpring Learn.
Launching training will take no more than a day. You don’t need to ask technicians to configure the system – it’s all set up for effective training. To see how easy it is to use iSpring Learn, you can book a free live demo. Don’t miss this chance to see iSpring Learn in action!
An LMS is a digital platform that centralizes and streamlines the process of administering, delivering, and tracking educational content and training programs.
You can use an LMS to:
You can organize and manage many different types of training programs in an LMS. These include compliance training, sales training, various eLearning courses, and even customer training programs. The flexibility of learning management systems allows you to tailor and administer training for different training needs, learning objectives, and audiences.
No, an LMS typically requires an internet connection to access and use its features. If you’re an LMS admin, you need to be online to manage and use the platform.
Learners, however, can often access learning content offline. iSpring Learn allows learners to download courses to the LMS’s mobile app and complete them without internet access. When the user is back online, their progress and learning stats will be updated automatically.
A learning management system is a great platform to streamline and effectively manage learning processes of any format or level of complexity. It also enables you to make your training and learning courses more targeted, actionable, and cost-effective.
Empower your team with the transformative capabilities of an LMS, enhancing learning experiences, boosting productivity, and ensuring that your organization raises top experts in your field. Try the 30-day free trial of iSpring Learn to witness firsthand how an LMS can revolutionize your training and learning processes.