“Tell them what you need your system to do, not what features it should have”.
Those were the words that had me sit upright during a webinar the other week. I’d been listening to a consultant giving some advice on choosing enterprise systems and although I’ve chosen learning management systems before – and also helped others to do so – I’ve also fallen into the trap of concentrating my efforts on coming up with a list of features. For the last two years, I’ve definitely thought more about the user experience, but it was this one statement that turned on the light bulb and set the bells ringing.
Unless you are totally focused on what you want the LMS to do, you are in real danger of choosing a system that is too feature-rich for your needs and which might well confuse your learners. Such a system might also take longer to deploy and cost you more. And even if it ticks off all the items on the feature list you still created (or downloaded off the Internet), you might find it just doesn’t behave in the way you expected it to – or worse – your learners expected it to.
Part of deciding what you need your LMS to do is to consider some typical learner use cases. These are the scenarios you should give to prospective vendors and around which you should request they base their demonstrations. Here are ten to get you started. Continue reading “Choosing an LMS – Meeting Your Fundamental Needs”
The move towards embracing social and informal frequently opens up the conversation to talking about user-generated and curated content (UGCC). This topic creates a lot of interest and excitement among many training professionals as it’s a great way to engage the business in learning. But I’m not sure we are seeing that much of it, which is a shame given it’s real potential to add valuable content to our overall portfolio.
How engaged are your learners? Specifically how engaged are they with your learning management system (LMS)?