What is an LMS?

Maybe you’re experts in face to face training and are considering the bold leap of moving your courses online, but you’re unsure of how to engage with your learners, how to keep track of them, how to present your material to your learners or how to test your learners. “Impossible” to do this remotely, you might think, but quite the contrary, thanks to the right Learning Management System (LMS).

So, what is an LMS?

The short answer to this question is, that an LMS is essentially a software application which allows you to manage the administration, documentation, tracking and reporting of your courses or training programs?

Let’s discuss this in a bit more detail:

Course content

First and foremost an LMS is the platform which hosts your online course material and is used to distribute this material to your learners. Whether your course consists of documentation only, video lectures, animation, webinars, or forum discussions. It’s all delivered via your LMS.

Activities

You would normally do practical exercises in class to assist learners with the retention of information and to make the course engaging. No problem, an LMS can be used to deliver engaging and interactive activities online. In fact, it opens a variety of creative activity options to support the retention of information.

Assessments

Your face to face courses usually include assessments. An LMS allows you to create different types of assessments. Whether you want to include a “pop quiz”, a graded assessment, assignments, reflection exercises or a full-on exam style assessment, the right LMS will cater to your needs. Big bonus announcement… it will also do the marking and grading of some of the assessments for you, so no more late nights slogging through test papers.

Learner management

Managing your course participants has become much easier. An LMS allows you to manage and track your participants’ journey through your course with the click of a button. All learner information is available centrally and whether you want to view their grades, their progress through a course, when last they logged into a course, managing user enrolment or even direct communication with your users, an LMS provides the perfect solution.

Reporting

LMS’s provide instant information and therefore live reporting is possible. Reports can be customised and filtered to provide you with all the relevant course and user information you need. It literally could not be easier.

Collating the POE

All the inputs required for the POE can be uploaded, stored, and managed via the right LMS. These inputs can also be assessed and moderated directly from the LMS, depending on the policy of your SETA. This makes an admin heavy and onerous task much simpler and efficient.

Well, there you have it in a nutshell, but if you’re still unsure of the powers of the LMS, why not schedule a demo with us at info@quaygroup.co.za.