5 Must-Haves for Your LMS

Recently, MemberSuite wrote a blog about the 5 Must Haves for Your Member Portal. While we agree that their 5 must-haves were spot on, we also think these are must-haves for your learning management system! After all, the AMS and LMS are both parts of an association’s digital ecosystem and should be delivering a similar quality and experience!

Below is a roundup of what we think are must-haves for your LMS:

1. Mobile Responsive Design

Long gone are the days when people were accessing their eLearning content from their desktop at home or in the office. People are now on the go and working from the road (or the plane, train, boat – you name it!) more than ever before. They expect to be able to access their eLearning content from whatever their preferred device is at that time. The easier it is to access your LMS, the more people will engage with your content and ultimately, your organization.

2. Easy Access

This can mean a variety of things. As mentioned above, being mobile responsive is imperative in making sure your LMS is easy to access. But that’s not all!

Accessibility – has your LMS provider actually taken the steps to make sure that your LMS is accessible to people with disabilities? We’re proud that Path LMS offers persons with disabilities an inclusive digital experience.
Single Sign–On – we have endless platforms and apps to log into – we dread the thought of creating another username and password and then having to remember it. This is just one reason why integration is important. Not only does this take the pain away from having yet another login, but it can also help with brand consistency, and even keeping all of your monetary transactions and activities in one place, depending on the type of integrations that have been setup.

3. Time-Saving

Your LMS should be easy to access (from any device, through a single-sign-on) and once on the LMS, it should be easy to navigate! Having an intuitive design, well thought out categorization, and robust search functionality all feed into your learners being able to access content quickly and save themselves some time!

4. Personalization

Technology is continuing to allow us to access more and more personalized experiences throughout our daily life. Whether it’s a website recommending new products to purchase based on what you’ve previously bought, a restaurant app suggesting new restaurants based on where you last ate, or a media app suggesting a new show based on what you’ve been watching – you’re constantly receiving these personalized recommendations. So how does this translate to personalizing your LMS?

Groups – allowing learners to follow specific curriculums and learning pathways based on their group permissions
Discussion Boards – allowing learners to interact with one another and discuss different events, courses, and presentations
Reporting – analyzing learner data and using this information to draw correlations between learners and content and changes and improvements that can be made to future courses
Community Integration – by integrating with a community, you can have more in depth engagement around courses as well as encouraging communication on things outside of the LMS, resulting in your learners becoming engaged in other facets of the association (or vice versa).

5. Good Data

More and more, decisions are being based on data. You wouldn’t continue creating similar courses if they weren’t be purchased, would you? By having good reporting and analytics available within your LMS you can make important decisions based on which events and courses are most (and least) popular, where learners are falling off and disengaging, and what people are purchasing. This will allow you to monitor, analyze, and improve learner adoption as well as behavior and your LMS’s financial performance.

While we feel these five are a great start, we understand that every association’s LMS needs vary and that there are probably many more than 5 must-haves on your LMS requirements list. Let us know what else is a must have for you and let’s chat about how Path LMS may be the right fit for your organization!

Blue Sky Blog