Learning Management System Pitfalls: What To Avoid When Using An LMS
A Learning Management System is a quintessential online training tool that has become an integral part of the eLearning design and development process of numerous training and corporate organizations. Some of its most convincing benefits include easy user management, uploading and organizing learning assets in one location, assigning courses, generating reports, assessments, and driving engagement of the learners or employees. However, these benefits are subject to utilization of an LMS to its best. While you access a variety of LMS features to simplify your training and eLearning programs, there are some pitfalls that you must avoid.
Here are 7 such pitfalls that you need to avoid when using your LMS:
1. Providing Content That Is Irrelevant
It takes the right content to be uploaded and shared with your learners or employees, to achieve the defined objective of your training or course. An LMS can support your goal which could be providing online course materials, onboarding, continued training, or corporate compliance in an effective manner if the content is engaging enough for the learners or, in some cases, the employees. Hence, pay attention to the learning styles of your learners, and accordingly try to make the content highly-engaging. Relevant content makes learners interact with the content better, and hence, it leads to better knowledge retention among learners. Content should be broken down into smaller chunks of information that can contain videos, SCORM packages, assignments, etc.
2. Creating Too Many Administrators Can Lead To Problems
While Abara LMS allows you to create as many administrators as required, it is recommended to keep the number of administrators small. Doing this makes it easy to identify who has made changes to the course, who has deleted or even created a group, or monitor and look at other actions within the LMS.
3. Trying To Replicate The HR System In The LMS
Often, administrators suggest including every piece of data on their HR system into the Learning Management System to keep it synchronized with the information stored in the HR system. However, this often leads to duplication of employee data such as date of birth, address, phone number, date of joining, and so on, thereby leading to accumulation of unnecessary information in the interface and records. It is suggested you store only that data on the LMS which is required to drive courses, training program enrollments, and reporting.
4. Poor Utilization Of The Integrations That You Need
If you are not integrating the tools you use, which can be easily linked to your LMS, then you are not taking full advantage of the integration features of your Learning Management System. In this case, you might be missing out on in-depth reporting that LMS can help you generate easily. For example, integrating social sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook can enable learners to share their completed courses online and mention their recent certifications on their social profiles.
5. Complicating Things
A Learning Management System is meant to simplify the learning process of organizations. But if there are technical obstacles in the learning process, the learners will eventually lose interest. Your LMS is required to help learners navigate smoothly and optimize clarity to access courses for all learners. The thumb rule of keeping things as simple as possible should be implemented to provide a smooth learning experience to the users and ensure they continue to stay interested in the training.
6. Poor Understanding Of All The Learning Management System Features
As an administrator, it is important for you to have a clear understanding of all the features of your LMS. Administrators are required to be the go-to-person when it comes to resolving system or learner issues. If you’re not clear with the capabilities of your LMS, it’ll be difficult to ensure that your learners have a smooth learning experience. Lack of understanding of LMS features will also affect achieving your goals and objectives. Although reaching out to customer support for certain queries can be done, it might not be the right thing to rely upon for real time issues. Moreover, a proper understanding of the Learning Management System will save time and effort in resolving issues of your learners.
7. Not Taking Feedback From Learners Or Employees
Not taking a follow up with employees or learners after training is a major pitfall that you must avoid. Gathering feedback after training helps in effectively gauging the efficiency of your LMS. Learner experiences are important to consider for improving training programs and courses in order to achieve the desired goals of the organization. Involving employees to share their experiences encourages them to take active participation in the training programs and is a good way to show that they are an important part of the process.
I hope these will help you not only to avoid mistakes but also take quick decisions to efficiently use a Learning Management System.