Choosing An LMS In 2020: Five Top Features To Look Out For

42% of American businesses report driving a positive ROI from their employee training efforts. Considering that, along with the fact that staying home offers everyone a ton of free time that can be turned productive, providing employee training is extremely important right now.

Not only would this ensure your employees come out of this crisis with better skills, it will also give them an assurance that their employer is looking out for them.

With that said, in order to operate all aspects of your employee training online, you need to have robust tools in your arsenal.

For some, it might even mean upgrading to a better learning management system. If you are one of them, read on to learn about the top features that LMS are offering in 2020:

Ease Of Use

Many years have passed since learning management systems became a commonly used tool but the importance of a simple user interface has not waivered, and for good reason.

If you or your learners have to spend time understanding how the LMS works, it is time to find another one, and you won’t be alone. This Brandon Hall study found that out of all the businesses looking to switch from their existing LMS, 82% want to do it because of the complex interface it offers.

An LMS with a complex interface will just give your learners and training administrators another new thing to learn, taking up man hours that could be spent otherwise.

To make sure it doesn’t happen to you, it is best to take your prospective new LMS for a trial run. During this time, test the usability of the LMS from both, the administrator’s and the learner’s perspective.

For learners, make sure it is easy to:

• Log in to the LMS
• Find training material
• Access notifications about upcoming events
• Look up results of assessments
• Contact the learning administrator or report issues

Similarly, for administrators, make sure it is easy to:

• Enroll new learners
• Upload course material
• Assign training courses
• Track progress and assessment results

Content Compatibility 

Content compatibility is one of the most in-demand features when it comes to learning management systems. In the case of training content, the most widely accepted compliance standard for content is the SCORM API, or its latest version that is also known as TIN CAN APi.

An SCORM compliant LMS will be able to read, process, and publish any content that is also SCORM compliant.

Since it is the most widely accepted format, it is best to make sure your new LMS is SCORM compliant.

With that said, content compatibility goes beyond SCORM compliance. It is also important to make sure that your new LMS supports the PPT format, video, or any other format of content that you may be using.

Mobile-Friendliness

The World is expected to have over 3.5 billion smartphone users this year. That’s half the world’s population. Chances are, more than 99% of your employees own a smartphone and a significant percentage out of these use them for more than 2 hours every day.

The point here is, most of us are used to consuming content on our smartphones. When training is also delivered on a device that we almost constantly use, it becomes more accessible.

Mobile friendly courses, combined with the microlearning approach can ensure your employees can consume and retain your training content anywhere and at any time they want to. 

In other words, mobile friendly courses enable self-paced learning in its purest form.

Gamification

Gamification is not a passing elearning trend anymore. The approach has proven its effectiveness and this 2019 study is a testament of the same. The study proved not only that gamification is an effective learning strategy, but also proved that it is in demand by learners.

With virtually no downsides, gamification is a feature that can help you improve the effectiveness of your training material overnight. Hence, when choosing your next LMS, make sure you look out for gamification features like levels, rewards, leaderboards, and badges, among others that you may need.

Reporting Capabilities

While these weren’t given much importance in the past, as LMS have evolved, their reporting capabilities have come a long way. These days, many LMS offer the ability to build and obtain custom reports that track metrics that matter to you.

This way, learning administrators have a holistic view of the progress of each batch and each employee. This enables learning administrators to create tailor made learning paths that address the individual needs of each learner, while aligning their training to your business goals.

Conclusion

Choosing the right LMS can be a difficult task. However, not doing the required research can turn out to be an expensive and time-consuming mistake. For this reason, it is best to narrow down your choices to a few LMS that you can then try, before making a purchase decision.