Benefits of using a Learning Management System
An LMS or Learning Management System is a software system that allows you to upload, administer and track online courses. Using an LMS brings many benefits, and is a great way to make your eLearning and digital training accessible your learners.
Below are some of the key benefits to using an LMS in your organisation.
1. Bookmarking
Booking involves allowing learners to take a course, leave, and then resume where they left off. For smaller courses this is not as much of an issue as the learner can take it in one go, but for larger courses or for learners with limited time, the ability to be able to stop and start a course at different times is vital. When using a Learning Management System it is possible to implement bookmarking. Once the course has been uploaded to the LMS it can keep track of learner progress and when the learner returns to the course they are prompted to continue where they left off. If the learner loses their network connection while taking a course this can also prevent them from losing their progress which will greatly improve the user experience.
2. Providing access
Using a Learning Management System means you have the ability to make your courses widely accessible to learners. Once the LMS has been set up on a server and the eLearning course has been uploaded, all the learner has to do is visit the URL for the LMS and log in with their username and password. This LMS can be accessed from any device and any location providing the learner has an internet connection. An additional benefit to hosting your eLearning this way is that you can also control who can access your courses. On the LMS you create user accounts, then you enrol that user account onto a course, if the learner is no longer taking the course you can simply unenroll them, this provides a level of security in that only the people you want accessing the course will be able to access it.
3. Social
Another benefit of using an LMS is that it can improve communication between instructors and students. Learning Management Systems provide the ability for communication to occur through features such as Announcements or Discussion Boards. For example, you might have a course online that you want learners to take, in this course you could set up a discussion board that all instructors and students have access to. If a learner gets stuck and has a question instead of emailing the instructor they would be able to post their question to the discussion board, then a lecturer or other learners could respond to this post with advice. This also helps to save time as lecturers do not have to repeat answers to common questions multiple times.
