Thinking Beyond LMS: 4 Reasons Today’s Learners Need More from a Learning Platform

1. The learning landscape has changed.

The LMS was created for a world where most learning happened offline. Learning took place in a classroom and the LMS supplemented that learning. The LMS was primarily a management and administrative tool. Students could use an LMS to download their grades, get assignments, and upload classwork. As the learning landscape has evolved, a lot of learning happens online now and platforms must help keep learners engaged outside of  a physical classroom experience.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have already gone beyond the LMS. Courses include interactive elements to pull learners into the content, and the learning experience is far more important than the content management.  If you’re not prioritizing an engaging and interesting learning experience, will the content fully empower learners to apply the knowledge to ultimately drive success for them and your organization?  

2. Today’s learners demand personalization.

The LMS provides primarily one-size-fits-all training, but that no longer works. Today’s learners are accustomed to personalized content in how they consume content, how they shop, how they read the news, and how they keep up with friends and family, through mobile and digital channels. As such, learners want to learn at their own pace, and they want the content delivered most effectively for their individual needs.
 

3. Engagement is more important than participation

An LMS focuses on managing learning, but it often leaves engagement behind. Today’s best eLearning systems employ a variety of features to ensure learners stay engaged, study more, and study longer. Key engagement drivers to consider:

Gamification employs features such as badges, incentive systems, leaderboards and games and simulations to keep learners engaged without a classroom. For example, our data show when our learners complete 40 assessment items, their performance increases at a faster rate. With gamification, our users can hit that number of assessment items much quicker and accelerate their gains. We’ve also seen learners who play a game during a session spend more time interacting with learning modules.

Video has become an integral part of daily content consumption.  With the rise of the smartphone, learners can access content from anywhere on a smaller screen and 7 out of 10 organizations already incorporate video into their learning programs.  Effective video content will feature assessments, interactive video, live video and more. Video ensures learners don’t have to be physically present to have an engaging learning experience.

Bite-sized content is important as learners are more pressed for time than ever. Employees typically have only 20 minutes a week available for learning. Rather than going through an arduous course that requires months to complete, bite-sized content is rapidly becoming an integral part of training programs to help learners achieve more.

4. Outcomes are crucial to today's learner.

It’s not enough just to get people into a learning system; learners are eager to retain information, pass an exam, and improve their performance for training programs in order to be more effective in their professional career. In today’s strong job market, employees are driven to be challenged to avoid burnout and or boredom. In fact, 90 percent of professionals feel that skills are more important than job titles and learning a new skill’ actually ranks as the number one career goal in 2018.

Learn how BenchPrep’s online, self-paced, learning success platform creates an engaging learning experience to motivate, improve readiness, and ultimately help end-users improve their outcomes beyond the capabilities of the traditional LMS.