Different types of Learning Management System

There are many types of LMSs available depending on your needs and budget. There are even free learning management systems such as open source software that by definition are 'open' i.e. the source code is freely available for you to use and to adapt to your own needs. Many users of open source software will make improvements or use add-ons for their own needs, and then put it back out into the community for others to use. Open source LMSs can grow rapidly if they get enough interest and input. While you may not get any official support for an open source LMS, there will usually be a strong community base online with forums or email lists where you can ask for and offer help.

Of course there is also also the commercial type of learning management systems. If you're paying for an LMS then you'll get a more robust product, you're also likely to get good documentation and you'll probably have a good level of support as well. A commercial product may be more stable and bug-free than a free version, but of course there are always exceptions to that rule so it's a good idea to read reviews of various LMSs before you make your choice. Check out the features to ensure that everything you need is included.

You'll also need to consider whether to use a deployed solution or a hosted system. A deployed solution system will generally be set up on computers within your premises and behind your firewall. A deployed solution (or Internal System) may incur extra costs as the setting up of the system is likely to be done in-house rather than remotely. An installed system may also require more maintenance and support than you're able to provide unless you have a dedicated IT team ready to support it. It is vital your system stays up and running so before you choose this option make sure you have people with the relevant skills available who will be willing to fix problems as soon as they occur.

With a hosted or SaaS (Software as a Service) LMS a lot of the work is taken off your hands, the system runs on someone else's server so you don't have to worry about server load or maintenance. The system will be set up by your provider and they should also take care of backups, or at least offer you a simple interface to schedule your own backups. A hosted service is normally up and running as soon as it’s ordered since the service provider will be used to the procedure. In some cases it can even done automatically by the system upon electronic request. They'll also be able to implement any updates and fixes remotely for you.

A deployed solution will have a greater initial cost as you'll have the software and installation to pay for, but it may be more cost effective in the long run. With a hosted system you'll have less to pay initially, no software purchase costs, no installation fees and limited technical problems but over the years you may end up paying out more than if you'd opted for an installed LMS.

Just the Basics: eLearning Content Development Tools

eLearning Content Development can range from simply posting PowerPoint decks with audio into a Learning Management System to a complex and custom interactive multimedia experience.  The content development approach that you take will be based upon the quality and complexity of the eLearning you wish to create. For example, you can use a tool like Articulate Presenter to quickly convert a PowerPoint file into an online eLearning course within minutes.  Spend a little extra time and you can add audio narration, quizzes, and other interactive items to your course.  However, unless you are a professional-level voice talent with a decent sound studio and you are a professional graphic artist with a great eye for design, your course may not look and sound as great as courses developed by skill professionals in each area of eLearning content development.

Major areas of eLearning Content Development

• Instructional Design (Learning & Teaching Theories)
• Content Writing/Storyboard Writing  (Technical and Creative Writing)
• Interactive / Game Design
• eLearning Graphic Design/Graphic Artist
• eLearning Authoring / Development (Captivate, Storyline, etc.)
• eLearning Programming (JavaScript, HTML, Variables and Triggers)
• Project Management
• Quality Control/Editing

e-Learning Authoring Tools

• Advanced tools for complex eLearning
  • Adobe Captivate
  • Articulate Storyline
  • Trivantis Lectora

• Simple tools for rapid eLearning
  • Articulate Presenter
  • Lectora Snap
  • iSpring Presenter

   How to make Effective Use of Videos in E-learning ?

9 Key Benefits of Using Video In eLearning

Here are nine of the key benefits of using videos in eLearning:

1. Videos help in keeping the learners engaged with the course; much better than simple page turners.
2. Videos are very demonstration-friendly; explaining a complex concept becomes easier with the use of videos.
3. It is seen that through videos learners are able to store information easily.
4. Videos help in capturing quick attention.
5. Videos are great for building a good rapport with the learners.
6. Videos are a great tool for reinforcing the information which has been taught verbally.
7. It has been seen that videos are great tools for triggering discussions.
8. Videos help in improving the overall learning experience by inviting the learners to think and analyze.
9. Simulations, used prominently in training courses on processes, can realize the full potential through videos.

5 Tips For Effective Use Of Videos In eLearning

Here are 5 key tips for effective use of videos in your eLearning:

1. Keep them short.Long videos tend to get boring and the learners can start losing interest in the content. Unless you are making the video interactive, keep them short and focused on one concept at a time. The information grasping becomes easy when the video is less than 5 minutes long.
2. Keep long videos interactive.In case you don’t have an option but to have longish videos, make them interactive. Ask learners for feedback, reinforce the concepts through quick summaries, or throw in some quizzes. You can also introduce branching scenarios and let the learners choose what they want to see next.
3. Use transcript.Don’t assume that everyone will have sound cards or headphones. Provide transcripts for the videos which can make it easy to follow those even for differently-abled learners.
4. Pay attention to file sizes.Slow loading videos can cause a lot of frustration to learners. Consider creating a separate version for playing on low bandwidths. Use good compressors to reduce the size of the videos.
5. Use videos for scenarios and simulations.Videos can be very well leveraged for creating immersive scenarios like “what to do” or “how to do” kind of situations. With the help of videos, it makes it easy to simulate a real-life situation.

Effective Use Of YouTube

YouTube today has become synonymous with video. eLearning professionals can very well leverage this powerful platform to introduce the power of videos in their eLearning strategy – that too, without too much investment of time and money. Here are a few tips to make the best use of YouTube:

• Create playlists around a specific topic and share it with the learners.
• Use the privacy settings in YouTube to share specific videos with specific learners.
• Use the power of annotations and links to provide additional information to the learners while they are watching the video.

General Guidelines For Video Production

Video production is a skill which needs to be developed. If you can afford it, hire a professional video production company. Alternatively, plan ahead of time to get the desired quality. Here’s a checklist to consider:

1. Create a proper script.
2. If your budget allows it, use professional voice over artists and professional actors.
3. Consider using a studio during recording.
   This will help you reduce the ambient noise which can be difficult to remove during editing.
4. Instead of relying on the camera’s microphone, have one which is close to the speaker’s mouth.
5. Some of the tools which you can use:
   • For Pre-production: Adobe Story, Celtx.
   • For Post-production: Adobe Captivate, Splice, Cyberlink PowerDirector.

Take Care Of These Issues With Videos

If videos are not interactive, they can bore the learners and they can lose interest in the course material. It is, therefore, important to include interactivity inside the videos which make the learners focus, think, analyze, act, and interact with the video.

Another issue with videos could be with the bandwidth. If the videos are not compressed properly, there can be issues in playing those over a low bandwidth.

It is also important that the videos are created with high quality graphics and gripping script, audio narration, etc. Otherwise, those can distract the learners. And the creation of high quality video can be time consuming and costly.

If produced well and used strategically in the eLearning courses, videos can be great for learner engagement. Hope this article provides you some guidelines to get started.

HOW TO CHOOSE RIGHT E-LEARNING PLATFORM?

Schools and universities throughout the country recognize the value of incorporating an e-Learning platform into their arsenal of educational tools. Such tools help expand the reach of education beyond the doors of the school by granting students, teachers and parents easy access to classroom material. It is no surprise that schools would seek to bring technology into the classroom.

The problem many educators face is choosing between the many available platforms to identify which is the best choice for their setting.

Blackboard

As one of the oldest e-Learning platforms, Blackboard has the distinction of reaching every aspect of the educational experience for millions of online learners, instructors and educators around the Globe. Blackboard has several functions which instructors and students find invaluable, such as instructor-students and student to student interaction through the dynamic use of discussion threads. Asynchronous discussion boards, blogs, and e–mail are an important aspect of each version of blackboard. Blackboard also features upgraded assessment tools as part of the grade function boards. Students can attach files and images to discussion and assignment threads, which increases the ease-of-use of the learning platform.

• Pros:

- Blackboard’s hierarchical structure produces a textual approach to teaching and learning.

- The class roster feature has two additional communication tools that allow all participants to manage a list of class members. This feature includes links to student’s homepages and e–mail addresses, which helps streamline communication regardless of student location.

- Search and communication functions allow students to find study material based on their preferred learning styles, which enhances the learning experience for the end-user.

• Cons:

- Instructors and students have little control over how they wish to structure their online learning experience.

- In the default view user’s replies are not listed unless the user is in tree view or expand all, which can complicate discussions that occur over multiple discussion threads.

- The grading system is convenient, but it completely decontextualizes student-student and student-instructor messages. This means that during the grading process, only communications from an individual student are visible and therefore the message may be lost.

e-College

E-College is the widely popular learning portal dedicated to professional students, teachers, educators and corporations worldwide. It provides a virtual learning environment that is easy-to-use and adapts easily to suit the needs of professionals.

E-college manages, develops and hosts eLearning software applications and support services for institutions, colleges and universities. Educators use the e-College learning management systemto deliver a professional online course to students via live video conference hosted by faculty.

As educators, students and instructor explore the site, they will come across various programs that will help them achieve their personal and professional goals.

• Pros:

- e-College requires less software and hardware because it provides a learning and teaching environment via the Cloud.

- Complete academic support services and professional development training is available through this platform.

- e-College boasts a high quality set of assessment and analytics tools to allow educators and students to quantify the learning experience.

• Cons:

- The back, forward, and refresh buttons are disabled in this platform, making it difficult to switch between units.

- The discussion threads are complex- students sometimes have difficulty selecting appropriate discussion threads for class discussions.

- Uploading and downloading large files is affected by factors such as user connection speed and the time of day. This can be problematic in situations where class materials have a strict deadline that coincides with times where many users are online.

Captivate

Adobe Captivate is a part of the adobe eLearningsuite. It has become one of the most popular and widely used e-Learning platforms among students and educators worldwide. Captivate’s learning tools allow users to develop any type of e-Learning coursewithout any prior technical knowledge. Adobe Captivate has a wide range of features such as customizable skins, multimedia support, and audio synchronization, just to name a few. It allows for users to produce output files in a wide range of file formats such as AVI, which can be used for both web and LMS delivery.

• Pros:

- Easy drag and drop component allows educators make learning fun through the use of drag and drop e-Learning modules, games, quizzes. This ‘gamification’ is cross-browser and cross-operating system compatible, which means that users can easily access these features from anywhere- even from an iPad or mobile device.

- Captivate features HTML5 support for Microsoft Power Point which allows users to add text, animation, and shape into Adobe Captivate.

- Educators can publish Captivate projects for both Web and Learning Management Systems. If a project contains audio and text, the program can compile the information in one SWF file that is supported by all video publishing sites.

• Cons:

- The program does not have the ability to allow users to save customized interaction themes.

- There are no updates available for advanced action functionality.

- Captivate is unable to send large files, which means alternative means of delivery must be used for large or bulky files. This is an inconvenience for faculty and students using the Captivate learning platform to transmit class documents.

Articulate

Articulate is another highly popular eLearning tool for delivering effective e-Learning solutions. It allows users to create high quality e-Learning software quickly and easily. Articulate’s rapid e-Learning solutions supports Microsoft PowerPoint add-ons for its all functions. There are plenty of advanced features such as easy-to-use user interface, multimedia support, customizable players, content importing facility, screenshot tools etc. Articulate’s e-Learning products like Presenter and Quizmaker simplify the creation of content to enhance the learning experience. There are various built-in question handling options in the Articulate quiz maker that allow users to develop their own questionnaires.

• Pros:

- Articulate easily integrates with other tools, supercharging the existing functionality of PowerPoint with animation, multimedia supports and other interactive features.

- It is an excellent tool for learning advanced PowerPoint creation by incorporating audio and quiz features.

- Intuitive user interface makes Microsoft PowerPoint users feel right at home.

• Cons:

- Engage tools have some limitation, engage interactive and multimedia features does not appear on the power point slide for added them we have to shift the power point interface and view in separate places.

- Add-ons are very limited in numbers in Articulate.

- Articulate takes long time to publish the content slide by slide, every time we publish content.

LearnMate

LearnMate is a powerful eLearning tool that enables teachers to manage classroom and lab activities, as well as trace the student’s progress and performance with real time data. The LearnMate learning management systems enable teachers or instructors in learning virtual community and collaboration of students. LearnMate content modules support rich multimedia or interactive features such as animation, Graphics, quiz, video, audio etc. LearnMate content modules are easily delivered to student desktops through the Internet.

• Pros:

- LearnMate provides meaningful assessment and real-time feedback on student progress.

- LearnMate provides valuable information to teachers or instructor that enables differentiated teaching methods.

- LearnMate features unique learning styles which determine individual learning needs of students and adapts teaching methods to fulfill their needs and goals.

• Cons:

- Our research did not reveal any cons to this system.

Moodle

Moodle is a type of open source software package under the GNU general public license for conducting online learning course management which provides you a virtual learning environment. It has become very popular among educators around the globe. Many institutions use Moodle to conduct online courses or blended learning. It can run on any machine that runs PHP and support SQL database types. It allows educators to manage and promote learning. Moodle gives many features to educators as discussion forums, Moodle instant messages, online news and announcements, grading, files downloads, online calendars, online quizzes and Wiki.

• Pros:

- As an open-source software it is free to download.

- Great community supports, there are lots of Moodlers in the community who are always ready to solve any problems with the software.

- There are many plugins and add-ons available for download for free that allow users to customize Moodle to fit their needs and requirements.

• Cons:

- Moodle has browser compatibility issues. If you check Moodle on different browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE etc. it will have different formatting.

- Reporting is difficult in Moodle, especially if we want to report on several courses at the same time.

- The software is updated frequently; however, some plugins and modules which were developed for older versions may not be compatible with newer versions.

The Importance of Mobile Devices in an e-Learning Environment

IPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys and other smart phone devices grow in number day by day. The use of such devices for e-Learning purposes must be taken into account when developing or choosing the platform that best suits the needs of the learning environment. There are many advantages to developing platforms that are compatible with mobile devices.

Users can easily access the learning application on their mobile device at any time, even when desktop devices are not available.

Users can use their smartphone devices as supportive educational tools and can access articles, essays and other academic items. This ease of access can improve student performance in the classroom without wasting time.

Mobile learning can increase the flow of communication between teacher and student. It can encourage shy students to communicate more openly when they are in class.

Each student has their own way of getting information through mobile learning they can able to learn according their preferred strategy.

Mobile learning can facilitate the student to personalize and enjoy learning in their own way. Through mobile device they can contact with industry experts and read reviews and blogs by field experts.

Many students feel shy and hesitant in the class room, but through mobile learning they can openly ask their questions and feel more comfortable in the class room.

More and more gadgets are being developed every day to help students with learning difficulties including distance, available time for learning, and disabilities. These gadgets help increase the productivity of the student and help them find a learning style that suits their needs.

What is SCORM Compliance & why is it Important?

SCORM is the collection of technical standard and specification for web based eLearning software products. In other words SCORM allows the programmers how to develop software so that it can compatible with other eLearning software. SCORM governs how online learning management system interoperates each other in the way of packaging content and exchanges data at the run time. It is all about creating modules of online training material that can be easily shared across systems. Both SCORM conformant and compliant means that eLearning products developed according SCORM standard or specifications, for claiming the SCORM conformance is to pass the corresponding within the ADL Conformance Test Suite of the corresponding SCORM version.

SCORM certified means we can use SCORM published content in any other learning management sites. SCORM allows to interoperability between learning software products and also define how online learning content and learning management system communicate with each other. There are many advantages for using SCORM, some of them are:

Interoperability: SCORM, determine how online learning content and learning management system communicate with each other.

Reusability: SCORM gives flexibility to incorporate online learning content in various application and contexts.

Durability: SCORM keep entire standard and thinks constant, allows redesign, reconfigure and recode the in cost effective manners.

Accessibility: the main features of scrum its accessibility. SCORM packaged course easily delivers from one location to another with any installation or reconfiguration.

Adaptability: SCORM adaptability enables author to mix and create training course for different group. This features works well for some scenarios, but not for others.

In essence, e-Learning platforms are changing the way students, professionals, and educators interact with the educational environment. Understanding the pros and cons of each platform can help educators around the world design tailored learning solutions that fit their budget and environment. This technology is robust and constantly changing to meet the demands of students and educators world-wide. As we demonstrated through this blog, there are benefits and drawbacks with every learning platform so it is important that students and educators research each platform carefully to ensure the platform suits their purposes without causing too many problems for students and faculty.

                                       
                                KINDLE- Major E-Reader & E-Learning Platform

Having used both Kindles 1 and 2, I thought it would helpful to list where the new Kindle excels and where it falters. The dead tree book will never die – I think it will even have more longevity and popularity than the boutique appreciation of vinyl records – but our generation will be the last to use “books” as our primary reading systems. Expect ebooks to hit colleges in perhaps five years and high schools and grade schools in about 7. That said, should you buy a Kindle now? Why and why not?

10 Reasons to buy a Kindle 2

1. It’s great if you travel. If you travel, the Kindle is a godsend. I’m the kind of guy who stocks up books for even short trips, fully expecting to finish War and Peace, Notes from Underground, and four Clive Cussler novels on a plane trip from Pittsburgh to Columbus. With the Kindle you have a full complement of books available at any time.

2. You can put anything you want on it. You can easily email DOC, TXT, and PDF files to your own Kindle email address for conversion to the Kindle – but that costs 10 cents.

3. It looks great. The Kindle 2 is an amazing improvement over the Kindle 1. If every manufacturer took cues on build quality and product life cycles from Amazon,  we’d all be better off.

4. It feels great. This new version has excellent button placement and is thin enough to cut cheese. It’s eminently portable.

5. Almost any book at any time. Except for a few esoteric reference books I’ve found just about everything I need on the Kindle store. As more and more publishers go ebook – and I think an iPhone Kindle reader will truly blow the last bottlenecks out – this excuse will become ineffective.

6. It works in inclement conditions. I was in Mexico with the wife and kids and I wanted to test the Kindle out near the pool. Three books later and I felt like the laziest high-tech maven in the world. The ladies next to me brought twenty softcover novels with them and all of them got wet and messy. The Kindle worked like a dream.

7. The bookmarking and highlighting systems are vastly improved. The original Kindle had two methods for note-taking: you could select text and add a note or you could add a book mark. The new system refines those considerably and adds visual feedback whenever you take a note.

8. The dictionary is now in-line. When you move to a word, its definition appears at the bottom of the page. If you wanted a definition before, you had to pop out to a separate page.

9. You can almost see and understand the illustrations in 16 greyscale shades. Note the “almost.” However, it’s better than 4 shades, which was abysmal.

10. It is the future. Sorry, it is. Amazon nailed the ebook and they’re going to own the space for the next few years. Maybe they’ll pull a Netflix and sell the software to OEMs, which is fine by me. But ebooks are what we’ll be reading while we rocket to Mars in 2050. Or we’ll have our robotic concubines read them to us.

10 reasons not to buy a Kindle 2

1. It’s bad for research. I’m working on a book right now and I wanted to use the Kindle for all of my research. Sadly, this is almost impossible. The book is a physical object – you can move through it, skimming for notes and important points – and there is something in our education that gives us a sense of space inside a book. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but you know how you can pick up a book and show someone what you’re looking for in a few page turns? You know it was halfway through, maybe a third of the way down the page, and it was near another set of words. The Kindle is not conducive to that kind of mental map-making… yet.

2. It’s horrible for reference. Don’t buy a Kindle of you just read programming manuals. Programming manuals offer something different. While it seems counterintuitive that a document you can search programatically wouldn’t be good as reference material, you’re better off looking up function calls on a website and using the physical book as a guide to building your programs. This is a corallary of point 1, above, so this could change.

3. The Kindle is flimsy. You’ll go through your day thinking you will break your Kindle. You don’t fit that much screen on a thin device that is meant to be thrown into a bag without a care and not risk cracking it. There will come a day when you open your bag and see that your Kindle is dead, even in its case. It’s not your fault. Say it with me: it’s not your fault.

4. It’s not ready for students. Add points 1, 2, and 3 together and you come to the conclusion that this is not ready for students. This may be a good device for English classes requiring lots of long novel reading, but as an education tool it isn’t quite there.

5. The net connection doesn’t work internationally. For some reason last year I was convinced the Kindle had Wi-Fi built-in. I was trying to get on the Internet in Warsaw, Poland and I kept looking for that Wi-Fi button. Then I remembered – no Wi-Fi. And I cried. How I cried, my friends. Then I downloaded the Kindle book onto my desktop and dragged it over via the USB cable. So that’s, in essence, your international solution.

6. No SD slot. While the Kindle can easily hold 1,500 books, what if you’re the kind of person who likes to keep everything in its right place? Maybe you want to make a book playlist? Maybe you have 1,501 books? I don’t know. Sadly, the Kindle doesn’t allow for memory expansion. Not a big deal, but to some it’s a bad thing.

7. Flight attendants will tell you to turn it off on take off and landing. You can’t explain that it’s epaper and uses no current. You just can’t. It’s like explaining heaven to bears.

8. It contains a battery. Remember, Reader, the Kindle is mortal. It will die on you when you don’t have your charger.

9. It’s bottom heavy. The internal battery makes the device want to plop face down on your chest. I read it last night when I was sleepy and it kept getting ready to fall on me.

10. There’s just something about a dead tree book, isn’t there? It’s nice to pop into the airport news stand and pick up a novel. It just is. I’m sorry.

                               IMPORTANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF E-LEARNING

Technological development and the internet have changed people’s lives on different scales including for instance teaching and learning. The web has become one of the channels of learning that opens the door for people around the world to access education for free, or for fewer costs.

The IT booming and the internet have opened the door to largely access knowledge, high quality education and training. This easy access using information systems and the web can improve people’s skills for fewer costs. Knowledge delivering to some people would have never been possible without the opportunities offered by technology and the web.

A recently published study has highlighted the importance and effectiveness of e-learning and how students are satisfied with web-enhanced teaching. For that purpose, researchers collected data through surveys “for a total of 45 undergraduate and 26 graduate students enrolled in landscape construction studio courses at Texas A&M University during 2011 and 2012.”

To understand the issue, researchers made comparison with another study that previously conducted in 2003–04. “They evaluated students’ learning satisfaction and the effectiveness of e-learning in landscape architecture construction studio courses, compared trends in learning vehicles preferred by graduate and undergraduate students, and examined preferred learning vehicles between students expecting an A grade and those expecting a B or C grade.”

This study which is published at a Journal of e-Learning and Higher Education found that “satisfaction level with web-enhanced teaching increased to 95% in the 2011–2012 investigation, compared to 73%-87% in the 2003–2004 one.”

The study results indicated that “students were highly satisfied with web-enhanced teaching in both investigations. Particularly, students in recent years were more satisfied with web-enhanced teaching than those in the past. Undergraduate and graduate students preferred different types of learning vehicles, in which undergraduates preferred interactive types. In addition, students expecting an A grade were more likely to prefer individual or independent learning vehicles whereas students expecting a B or C grade relied on interactive learning methods.”

For teachers and instructors, they can learn from this study that the web-enhanced teaching “is no longer an add-on feature in teaching but a necessity” as stated in the research. What can still be missing in online learning and teaching is the interactivity and communication offered in class-based lessons. As stated in the study “undergraduates who are more likely to rely on interactive learning may suffer from web-based teaching that often lacks interactive communications.”

Today, the use of web to teach and learn is inevitable for both teachers and students. Online courses are becoming more and more necessary for education to and for knowledge spread. Thus, teachers should consider this trend in education and get prepared technically and pedagogically to take online teaching in consideration. In turn, students need to get enough skills that will help them effectively benefit from the advantages e-learning is providing.

Today, e-learning is adopted not only by students, but also by organizations that want to offer training for their employees. E-learning is a priority for businesses that look forward to improve employee’s skills and the economic benefits they can generate from that. That’s why online learning has become an important factor for both, education and business.

Learning Management System(LMS)

LMS stands for Learning Management System and it's a global term for a computer system specifically developed for managing online courses, distributing course materials and allowing collaboration between students and teachers. A LMS will allow you to manage every aspect of a course, from the registration of students to the storing of test results, as well as allowing you to accept assignments digitally and keep in touch with your students.

LMSs are built on various platforms, commonly PHP, .Net or Java and they will hook up to a database such as PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server. There are many LMSs out there, both commercial and open source.

In a corporate environment such a system can be used to monitor staff, and keep records of appraisals and training. Whether your course is run for a few learners over a long period of time, or for many over a shorter period, a Learning Management System makes your life easier and helps your course run smoothly. A good LMS will also have a reporting system so you can access information that would be tricky to gather yourself.

LMSs do vary in the features they offer, but most systems are likely to have some or all of the following features:

Easy GUI

GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. Most LMSs offer customization options for the interface to allow the user to give a unique flavor to his learning platform. Although the GUI is there to make the environment more aesthetically pleasing, it’s also meant to be functional.

Customization

Aside from the GUI an LMS will oftentimes offer several different options for customization to tailor the system to your needs. Language options, notification settings and other important features can be changed to suit the way you want your LMS to work for you. This is great because one LMS can be used by many different types of users, each with unique preferences.

Enrollment

The system may allow students to enroll online and keep track of their details, course progress and test results for you. It may also allow students to pay their course fees online via credit card, debit card or PayPal.

Virtual Classroom

Your LMS may integrate with whiteboard systems for virtual classroom sessions and help you to schedule sessions too. It may offer you the ability to send out invites or reminders for classroom sessions and integrate with an online calendar system or with Outlook.

Social Networking

An LMS may be able to integrate with social media so you can share your content or news items via Twitter or Facebook etc. at the click of a button.

Communication

Your LMS system should also have built in functionality for communicating with your students, such as sending out a bulk email to everyone on a particular course, to individual students or to students studying a particular pathway. You should also be able to schedule automatic emails which can be very useful for notifying students of an upcoming test or virtual classroom session. A LMS may provide you with a chat room or a forum that you and your students can use.

Course pathways

With your LMS you should also be able to specify the details of a course with a flexible work flow to set students on certain ‘learning pathways’.

Reports

Any good LMS will have a reporting system you can tap into, generating reports that you can export into Excel, and also offering you graphical representation of your data for ease of understanding.

Help with content creation

Being user-friendly is more than just a phrase. It’s an action. When entering into your LMS for the first time it’s good to have at least a sample of a course to get you going. An example of how to upload, manage, and distribute content within the system can go a long way with a new user. Templates are also good at getting new users going.

Testing

Tests are an important part of many online courses and most LMSs will have plenty of functionality related to this. You'll want a robust test environment with various types of tests available to you and some built-in templates to use as a starting point. It's likely that you'll have the ability to randomize test questions and set a time limit for tests. With the test environment being within your LMS, you should also be able to rely on the security of your system. Test results will be stored and available to you within the reporting area of your LMS. You should also be able to set up a multiple choice test to be self-grading and choose to have the results delivered just to you, or perhaps also displayed instantly on-screen for your students.

E-learning in the education sector vs Corporate E-learning

E-learning allows both students and business executives to learn anywhere and at any time. You can learn from virtually any place with a computer or mobile device and internet connection, meaning you can study from home, on vacation or in your break. But e-learning is more than about convenience and there are fundamental differences between e-learning in the corporate sector and in education.

What happens in the corporate environment?

The role of corporate training is to ensure an employee has the knowledge and skills to undertake a specific operation to enable an organization to continue to operate. Fundamentally, corporate training is centered on knowledge transfer. For example, conferences and workshops are an essential yet expensive part of business and e-learning makes it affordable and efficient - sales people, for instance, can receive their training on new products and sales strategies online. E-learning can be translated to lower costs to deliver training in a shorter period of time, especially when employees are spread worldwide.

Corporate education however adds another dimension and depth to training by involving learners as participants in generating new knowledge that assists an organization to develop and evolve.

The main characteristics of corporate learning are:

Fast-paced: Enterprise learning is mostly "fast paced" because "time is money" in the corporate world. Training needs to be delivered in as short a time frame as possible with maximum results.

Career-related: Enterprise learning helps employees gain new skills to advance their careers inside the company. Corporate Learning Management Systems have additional modules to facilitate that process.

Benefits organization: Enterprise learning focuses mainly on pragmatic issues with immediate benefits for the organization rather than just individual benefit. Ultimately training is required for the organization to function correctly, and corporate education in order for it to evolve and develop.

Training vs. Education: Enterprise is mostly focused on training, while education is mostly about learning though "igniting curiosity" (check out this related post on ‘Learning through Curiosity’). Training usually means the act of being prepared for something, of being taught or learning a particular skill and practicing it until the required standard is reached. This has obvious practical implications for the workplace.

Return on investment: An enterprise needs to be able to calculate the ROI of its learning investment. In an educational context this ROI is difficult to calculate and usually the effects of learning take years to show.

What happens in educational institutes?

In comparison with corporate e-learning, learning in the education sector focuses primarily on knowledge transfer and not on training i.e. in education we mainly strive to learn things with global scope (e.g. a subject such as mathematics) whilst corporate e-learning is more focused on business needs (e.g. new recruit induction). The word education means to gain general theoretical knowledge and this may or may not involve learning how to do any specific practical work, tasks or skills. Please note that there is some overlap and that the word ‘education’ can also refer to a process of training or receiving tuition. For example, basic training in a field such as health services is usually a combination of theoretical, educational and practical learning skills.

Convergence

Corporate e-learning professionals can learn from academic e-learning initiatives and vice versa, and we are currently seeing a convergence of academic and corporate e-learning needs. For example, the academic space is starting to gravitate towards incorporating corporate methods in the classroom on how certain topics are taught. And on the corporate side they’re shifting the model of utilizing technologies in a way that supports the traditional classroom of academics especially with regards to blending technologies.

There is obvious overlap: corporate mobile learning for example is becoming increasingly popular with learners having one if not more mobile devices in their possession and taking these devices to school or work. Learners have access to the internet and social networks via these mobile devices so all the technologies required to gather information, create content and communicate with other people are readily available and naturally create an environment conducive to learning. Currently both the education and corporate sectors are struggling to answer the exact same questions: how do we use these for learning? How do instructional design, and teaching methodologies and theories apply to delivering content via mobile devices? It’s only natural for knowledge to be shared across the table.

Training vs Learning

It's important to understand the difference between learning and training. Of course they are inextricably linked, but they are unique aspects of any educational process. Training is the giving of information and knowledge, through speech, the written word or other methods of demonstration in a manner that instructs the trainee. Learning is the process of absorbing that information in order to increase skills and abilities and make use of it under a variety of contexts. Whatever the goals, the quality of the learning will rely largely on the quality of the training, and so the role of trainer is very important as it can have a huge effect on the outcome of a course for the learner.

   Let's look at the characteristics of each, and see what makes an e-learning         environment work.

The characteristics of LEARNING

As mentioned above, learning is the process of absorbing information and retaining it with the goal of increasing skills and abilities in order to achieve goals - but it's more than that. Learning is what we go through when we want to be equipped for non-specific and unexpected situations and the two are not mutually exclusive. While you do learn to do something specific, you are also inadvertently equipped with the knowledge and/or skills to face future challenges. In essence, learning is all about equipping a person to tackle not just today's issues, but preparing him/her to creatively come up with ways to tackle tomorrow's issues.

The characteristics of TRAINING

Training on the other hand focuses more on the development of new skills or skill sets that will be used. Training is the process each new employee goes through when joining a company to learn how to carry out the day-to-day operations, know how their department works and how job-specific tools operate in order to carry out their responsibilities. In essence, through training, we are not looking to reshape the behavior of an individual rather the point is to teach the employee or learner how things are done so that they can then carry out a process on their own.

Ideally, an e-learning environment will utilize both learning and training principles throughout its curriculum. This allows instructors/trainers to provide their learners with the tools to tackle current issues, develop life-long skills, improve on their problem-solving skills and utilize resources to the best of their ability.

Best Practices of online training

Online learning can offer a wide range of benefits. However, the knowledge that a student is able to acquire this way depends not only on the course material that is offered, but also the practices used to provide them with this information. Here are just a few of the best practices of online training which help to better facilitate the e-learning process:

A supportive community

Teachers and e-learning establishments should encourage a strong sense of community amongst their online students. This will enable students to interact with one another and the instructors, as well as with the resources provided, making for an enhanced educational experience!

Clear expectations

Students should be aware of what they will be receiving from the virtual class instruction, and both parties should know the preferred method of communication and delivery of the core curriculum. For example, a teacher may prefer to email assignments to students, while another might choose to deliver it via the e-learning site instead. Also, it’s best to have clear expectations about how long each item of coursework should take to complete.

Asynchronous and synchronous activities

It’s important to incorporate activities that are more interactive, as well as those that require the student to brainstorm and research a topic in depth. This can be an important differentiator in a company’s elearning best practices mindset and thanks to the internet, students can now attend live virtual courses as well as complete coursework offline that can enable them to delve into a specific subject or skill set.

Effective usage of available resources

To get the most out of the online learning experience both the teacher and the student should take full advantage of the vast amount of resources that are available online. There are literally hundreds of online services that offer access to information, with Wikipedia being a prominent example. Instructors should seize the opportunity to enhance their content with online material or redirect students to additional web resources.