Choosing an LMS platform for your site is not an easy task.
The market is filled with many choices, and when you don’t know about the features that should be checked in any LMS platform before choosing it, then it becomes even more difficult to make a choice.
We understand this, and that’s why in this article we’re going to talk about 8 essential features that must be there in any LMS platform.
Towards the end of this article, we’ll also tell you about some platforms that come with these necessary features built-in. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!
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1. Reporting and Data Analysis
One of the first important features that you need in your e-Learning site is strong reporting and data analysis functionality. This functionality is critical to improve the learning experience, determine the content needs of your students and track a whole lot of other things.
Whichever LMS you choose, it should be able to generate comprehensive reports about the number of site visitors, pages most visited by the visitors, course completion rate, bounce rate, the time they spent on pages, session tracking, email tracking, etc.
These are all very important metrics that you will need to craft your marketing campaigns and course content, so your LMS should have the ability to generate their reports.
2. Assessment & Live Feedback
These features help not only in encouraging your students when they perform well but also in pointing out areas of their learning where they need improvement.
That’s why the ability to track student progress and assess their performance should also be there in any LMS platform.
In addition, there should also be the functionality to provide live feedback to students on the basis of their activity and performance.
Some of those features include test scoring, grade book, leaderboard, course progress tracking, multiple scoring methods, multiple assessment types, multiple quiz types, custom quiz options, exam engine, simulations, branching scenarios, etc.
3. Student Management
Next, come the features related to student management. These features are necessary to ensure the smooth and timely handling of various tasks related to the management of an online school.
The absence of proper student management features can force you and your instructors to waste a lot of time on tasks other than teaching.
Ability to enroll students in bulk, filter them according to their performance, organize them in groups, attendance functionality, and allowing others to manage your students are some of the necessary features that help in easier management of students. These should certainly be the part of an LMS you choose.
4. Teacher Management Tools
Apart from students, teachers are another important part of any e-Learning website.
When you have multiple teachers or instructors teaching on your site, professional teacher management tools also become very important. And since you’ll need multiple teachers sooner or later, these features also become very important for any LMS platform.
Every good LMS platform should provide enough functionality to manage the affairs of teachers as well. For example, it should allow the addition of multiple instructors, their payments, their role management, assignment of other’s courses to them, and so on.
Without these features, it can be extremely difficult to provide a good experience to your teachers and instructors.
5. Virtual Classroom
The ability to conduct virtual classes is also a must for any kind of LMS platform.
Regardless of how detailed your course material is, there will be moments when you would have to explain something in a live chat or conference call to your students.
In such situations, the video conferencing functionality comes to the rescue. So either your LMS should have that functionality built-in, or it should allow integration with other popular video conferencing apps like Zoom and Google Meet.
6. Easy Payment Methods
This one is arguably the most important thing on the whole list.
Your LMS can have everything mentioned on this page, but still, your e-commerce business may fail to take off if the payment methods offered by you to purchase the courses are not easy enough.
If people find it difficult to checkout and purchase your courses, they’ll simply have to purchase a similar course from any of your competitors. So the LMS you choose should not only allow easy checkout but also support multiple payment methods like PayPal, Stripe, etc.
7. Mobile Integration and Apps for Learning
We live in a mobile age, and it’s not surprising that the e-Learning space has also been affected by this trend.
Today more and more people want to learn from their mobile devices. So, it’s important for your LMS to have mobile-friendly features like:
- ability to easily build an app
- responsive multi-device design
- mobile-friendly layouts
- touch-screen friendly features (i.e. drag and drop, pinch to zoom, double-tap, etc.)
- And analytics about how many of your students learn on mobile devices
You can keep that in mind all of these features while planning your content in the future.
8. Online Communities and Social
Finally, your LMS should also have social features that allow the learners to learn in groups and take help from each other to understand the complex subjects.
In a traditional school and classroom setting, they can easily take the help of their friends or even teachers to resolve their doubts, which is why the classrooms have thrived throughout the years.
If you want your online learning site to thrive as well, your LMS platform should allow the creation of forums and groups for online discussion. It should also allow messaging, social sharing, and inviting others to discuss and learn.
Why is it important to choose a platform with these features built-in?
As explained in each of the sections given above, all these features help in easier management of your online school and allow you to focus your time on creating course content (which is the primary role of any teacher).
They also allow your students to learn in a better way, and teachers to teach in a better environment. That’s what makes all these features necessary for any LMS platform.
No matter what type of e-Learning platform you choose, you should ensure that all these features are available in it. Unavailability of even a few of these features can cause major roadblocks in the growth of your e-Learning site.
Conclusion
We’ve already explained which features should be there in a professional LMS platform, and why is it important to have them. Now in the concluding thoughts, we’d like to take a look at some of the platforms that provide these features.
LearnDash, Moodle, Teachable, and LearnPress are some of the platforms that provide these features.
We hope we were able to answer your questions about the features that must be there in an LMS. If you still have any doubts or questions, feel free to share them in the comments!
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