Which LMS would you consider for your E-Learning?

(LMS) stands for learning management system, which can help you to manage, administer your e-learning system. An LMS is a perfect technology to replace your manual work and save time and money. And even they can forecast data and progress reports. Market of Learning Management system is volatile and it is changing rapidly especially when it comes to Joomla platform. Landscape of LMS is not defined and it keeps on adding with new features.

An organisation adopt LMS basically to meet there E-Learning needs and finding a best suited LMS is not an easy job. Once you select the LMS for your company, your organisation will tend to use it for next 5 to 10 years meeting your organisation needs. So that’s, the reason it makes difficult to select a perfect LMS. Before selecting a LMS, it is important that you evaluate it.

How to evaluate a LMS product

Evaluation of a LMS product basically comprises of five major parts.

1) Need for LMS (Need Analysis)

2) Define your Needs or Requirement’s.

3) List of available options or Products.

4) Evaluate selected option or product.

5) Select from the Evaluation list.

1) Need for LMS – Need analysis is very important in LMS selection of an organisation. You need to check back with the leadership, training teams and Learners for their views. If your organisation is looking for a change of LMS, then you need to consider taking feedback from the training team about their liking and dislikes.

2) Defining Requirements – Requirements forms the base of LMS section so it is very important to know the requirements and it becomes easier to evaluate. To define the requirements you need to gather the previous points for “Need for LMS”, try to think what learners and management would like to achieve from the LMS. Make the express list of requirements broadly based on three criteria’s: Technical, Functional and Costs.

For Example:-
Technical – Can this LMS be easily managed, can I define the roles, will it imply any cost for managing or can this be managed by local IT.
Functional- Will this LMS be able to track the performance of the employees, Can this be accessed from smart phones.
Cost- How much will it cost to the organisation, is there an option yearly payment or volume licencing.

3) Product Available- There are number of products available in the market, you need to shortlist your product selection catalogue based on the on requirements. This will basically filter out non-qualifying LMS products. For example not all products will have will have 18 different types of questions patterns or multi-response options.

4) Product Evaluation- Now you can start evaluating your selected product. Always judge on the different variables like LMS performance, LMS speed, time to load a module etc.

5) Product Selection- This is the final stage of settling with the product. If possible arrange a call with the product manufacturer to get the best product quote or send a request for proposal to your entire product finalist.

Very often big organisation selects a LMS product without surplus investigation on the requirements. A thorough need analysis not helps the organisation but also to its stake holders. Analysis requires a lot of time, but the above points will surely help you make a better picture on your LMS requirements.