How to choose a Learning Management System - Part 1 – Working out where you want to get to

This is our first post in a series of joint blogs with Clint Smith at LearnWorks about Choosing a Learning Management(LMS) . Last year Sprout Labs and LearnWorks were involved in couple of LMS selection and management projects. We are going to explore what we observed and learnt during those projects.

Working out where you want to get to

The world of learning is changing rapidly and the technologies to support learning in workplaces haven’t always kept up. First-generation learning management systems were mostly just places to store, host and track self-paced modules. The focus of these systems has always been tracking and reporting module completion, so they look and feel like databases. They are completely focused on content (i.e. information) – not a trainer or a group or a discussion (or a tweet) in sight. Self-paced learning is easy for everyone in the organisation to understand. You buy, develop or commission an eLearning “module”, upload it to the LMS, enrol participants in the course and track completions. Good-quality self-paced programs still have a valuable place in a learning and development strategy, but if this is the default view of eLearning at your place – it’s what eLearning “is” in its entirety – you’ve got some serious work to do. For an avalanche of reasons, organisations are now looking to add facilitated and social learning to their repertoire of learning and development programs. To keep up with the technology and reap the business benefits that blended learning offers, you will need an LMS that provides a virtual learning environment for trainers and facilitators, not just a database of modules. They need an interactive online space to support a program, not just a click-and-complete catalogue. These have the look and feel of social websites – interactions with people, graphics and video.

There is a language problem here because “LMS” can mean so many different things. In the past, corporate LMSs were about managing employee training and performance.

Their key features are:

• self-paced module delivery and tracking face-to-face event management performance management.
• On the other hand, LMSs used in the education sector are about instructors delivering facilitated courses to groups of learners.

The key features of these are:

• course and group management 
• easy access to course materials
• social and collaborative activities e.g. forums and wikis

.To implement blended learning in a corporate setting you need the functions of both types of LMS. Moving to blended learning and 70:20:10

Once upon a time “blended learning” meant providing self-paced courses with accompanying face-to-face delivery. You’d suspect that this was often an each-way bet in case the online bit “didn’t work” because “you can’t really learn without a trainer”. Blended learning has now become a powerful and complex mixture of technologies and delivery modes including full online delivery, mobile learning, social learning and collaborative learning. The popular 70:20:10 learning model is a useful means of focusing on workplace learning and learning from others rather than just on formal or structured programs.

The traditional content-focused LMS doesn’t support these types of learning, so many organisations are shopping for a new LMS. Usually the Learning and Development area starts the push for a new LMS because the current one just doesn’t cut the mustard for their needs. Before starting to look for a new LMS you need to have some important internal conversations.

Because of the transformation of learning away from being content focused to being performance focused, choosing an LMS has become a whole new ball game. It’s not just about picking a platform with new capabilities. It’s also about working out new ways of delivering, and then building the new skills and processes required to design and deliver learning. A new LMS can often be a driver for organisational change. For an organisation these changes can be hard – it’s like starting from scratch on the whole eLearning thing. Before you can sensibly choose a new LMS solution, you need to know what you want to do with it. Before you can get down to your IT shopping list of features and requirements, you first need an agreed L&D blueprint for change.

Use your vision of learning and development to drive lms selection

The most important factor for an organisation in selecting a successful LMS and implementation process is having a clear vision for the future learning programs. This is a high-level statement of where you want to get to, and why. It outlines your business goals for the investment. It describes your main mix of delivery modes. You need it to be as clear as possible before you commence your platform research and before you begin preparing your Request documents (Request for Proposal or Request for Quote) by building “use cases” and detailing your requirements.

In the Request, use a strong opening vision statement as an explicit prompt for the provider to respond to your big agenda and explain how they can get you there. For your L&D people involved, the relationship with the LMS provider will need to be a long-term service partnership. Putting your vision statement up front gives you a chance to gauge what they might be like as an ongoing partner to help you implement your vision.

Next post: How to choose a Learning Management System - Part 2 – Working out what you’ll need