It's not all about the content then? The LMS can do much more.
So you’ve finally decided on the LMS you want for your organisation and all systems are go for implementation. There is no doubt about it, you have made a huge step forward in streamlining your L&D under one manageable roof. But before you experience all the wonderful gain that comes with a Learning Management System, there will be some areas of pain for you brave L&D warriors to overcome!
Step into the learner's shoes...
This is the all-important first step in successfully implementing your LMS. The one thing with implementation that is often forgotten is the user experience. We tend to go off into an excitable tangent of squeezing as much information as we can onto the landing page, with videos, text, pictures and links in abundance. But what does this look like from the learner’s perspective? Probably quite overwhelming and a bit ‘put-offish’. With the look and feel, the key thing to remember is that we want our learner’s to feel comfortable with it and, more importantly, to come back and use it time and time again. The personal term of choice here is ‘learner centric’ – consider who your learners are and create something fun, appealing, informative and easy to use. Make important stuff easier to find. Do this and you are half way to success already!
Divide and conquer?
So who will be using the LMS? Depending on the size and nature of your organisation, you may have a diverse range of people you need to appeal to. Is there certain mandatory information you need to capture for each user? Whether it’s the sales team, the customer care team or the engineers out in the field, it’s worth thinking about what their individual needs are and how best to organise the structure of the LMS to accommodate that. Creating individual groups or ‘sub-sites’ within the LMS is an excellent way of doing this. As well as benefitting from any general content that applies to all learners, each individual group has its own specific landing page, ability to add relevant learning content for that group and an administrator to manage it all. Everyone really can be a winner!
What's that you said about content?
When it comes to an LMS most people assume that it is just a repository for eLearning content. This is partly true of course, but it ignores the wealth of other benefits the LMS will provide. You can manage all your classroom training processes, company meetings and webinars as well as posting monthly staff newsletters, briefings and surveys on a range of relevant topics. You really can engage with every level of the organisation! Imagine that – a one stop shop for all your company communication needs! Talk to your internal marketing and communications teams. Open up the LMS to be about more than just learning content - it is an expensive tool to just hold eLearning courses!
Who’s the boss?
They say too many cooks spoil the broth – well, too many admins can really spoil the LMS experience! It is important to decide who will be the key ‘go to’ person when it comes to creating new users, adding core content and running those all-important reports. Too many LMS ‘super admins’ can often ruin the centralised nature of the learning experience you want to create. My suggestion would be; select one ‘super admin’ to assume overall management of the LMS and, if necessary, create sub groups with individual admins to manage their own sites. This way you keep the nice centralised structure of the LMS whilst catering for the needs of the organisations masses!
So, if you can truly encompass all the LMS has to offer, create a learner centric platform and decide on the best structure for your organisation, you will find that the path to successful implementation will be a short one! Happy implementing!
If you want to see what else we are up to, check some more blog posts here:
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Thanks Mark!
This blog was written by Mark Gourley, a Learning Consultant with Logicearth Learning Services.
Blog posts are managed by Fiona Quigley - feel free to send any queries.
