What is a
Learning Management System
(LMS) – Everything You
Need to Know

Imagine a company that’s just secured a game-changing contract, and its team is buzzing with excitement. But with expansion comes several challenges. For instance, quickly equipping employees across different cities with new skills and protocols in a short span may be difficult. Traditional training methods such as booking venues, coordinating schedules, and flying in trainers can become logistically crippling, not to mention costly. Employees are left juggling their usual tasks with fixed training sessions, which often means vital skills slip through the cracks.

This scenario illustrates a common struggle for growing businesses: delivering consistent, efficient training without disrupting the workflow. Modern solutions like Learning Management Systems (LMS) can help. They offer a flexible, scalable way to train teams regardless of location.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software platform designed to streamline educational and training program management, delivery, and tracking. It is widely used across industries for corporate training, educational institutions, and professional development, offering a versatile solution for e-learning.

What is a Learning Management System?

An LMS is a centralised hub where educational content is stored, delivered, and managed. It helps organisations create courses, manage user information, and track progress. By leveraging cloud-based technologies, platforms like AlphaLearn provide accessibility from any device, allowing users to learn at their own pace, irrespective of location. This e-learning method particularly benefits companies with employees across various regions, as it supports synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (self-paced) learning​.

Types of Learning Management Systems

There are primarily two types: cloud-based LMS vs on-premise LMS. Let us dig deeper into the intricacies of both training methods below:

• Cloud-based Learning Management System: These are hosted on external servers and accessed via the Internet. They are typically easy to set up and maintain, cost-effective, and scalable. For organisations with smaller IT teams, cloud-based types of LMS solutions offer an ideal setup as they minimise infrastructure requirements and provide easy integration with other tools.
• On-premise Learning Management System: These are installed on a company’s local servers and managed in-house. While they offer more customisation and control, they incur higher costs and require substantial IT support. This type is suitable for organisations with specific data security requirements and a larger budget for software management.

How Do Learning Management Solutions Work?

A corporate learning management system stores and delivers digital course content to learners. Administrators can design courses, upload various formats of learning materials (such as PDFs, videos, and quizzes), and set learning paths. Features like automated assessments, certification, and progress tracking help streamline learning. Additionally, systems like AlphaLearn integrate with video conferencing tools, enabling live training sessions, webinars, and discussions​.

Key Features of LMS: A Guide

Modern LMS features come packed with various enhancements to elevate the professional learning experience. Allow us to elaborate further below:

• Course Management: Easy creation, management, and scheduling of courses. Trainers can design tailored programs and learning paths and track progress effortlessly.
• Live Training Integration: Seamless integration with tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams for conducting webinars and interactive sessions.
• Assessments & Certification: Automate tests and generate certifications upon course completion.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Access courses from any device, ensuring mobile learning.
• Analytics & Reporting: Track learner performance through detailed reports and data-driven insights.
• Customisation: Personalise the LMS interface to reflect the company’s branding​.

Advantages of Using an LMS

Individuals can seamlessly track their progress with a dedicated LMS to handle all professional training. Here are some other potential advantages of employing such a system in your organisation or personal growth:

• Cost and Time Efficiency: Traditional training programs involve significant costs of travel, accommodation, and printed materials. LMS eliminates these by offering digital content, reducing overall training expenses.
• Accessibility: Learners can access course content anytime, anywhere, making it easier to fit learning into their schedules. This feature is particularly beneficial for global teams operating in different time zones​.
• Scalability: Whether training a small group or thousands, LMS can handle the scale, offering a consistent learning experience across the organisation.
• Easy Compliance: Regular updates in training materials ensure that employees are always up-to-date with the latest regulations, which is crucial in industries where compliance is mandatory​.

Who Can Benefit from an LMS?

The benefits of LMS are endless for all kinds of professionals. These platforms are versatile and can be used by various industries. Allow us to share a break-down:

• Corporate Training and Enterprise Learning Management: Companies can deploy LMS to train employees on new skills, compliance, product knowledge, or customer service. It simplifies the onboarding process and continuous employee development.
• Educational Institutions: Schools, colleges, and universities can use LMS to manage online classes, assessments, and student progress, especially in blended or fully digital learning environments.
• Professional Training Providers: Businesses offering professional development and certification programs can use LMS to deliver courses to a broad audience without geographical constraints​.

What Type of Content Formats are Supported?

Now that you have finalised what LMS you would choose for your organisation, you need to finalise what content you are going to publish on the software. Generally, the content formats in an LMS can be classified into two broad categories:

• Learning: This involves content created to deliver a certain learning to users. This can be done through different formats such as:
  • Online courses: You can devise online courses that can be accessed by learners anytime and anywhere. The most common file types for online courses are Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and Tin Can.
  • Downloadable resources: Another way to share knowledge with your users is through the use of downloadable resources such as a guide or a manual. As an admin, you can upload any number of documents onto the software and assign them to specific learners. LMSs have the handy option to electronically store downloadable documents and access them whenever required.
  • Seminars and webinars: As a part of blended learning approaches, you can use seminars and webinars to impart learning to your users. While seminars are live, face-to-face workshops, webinars are pre-recorded sessions made available through web conferencing.
  • Videos and links: The best forms of bite-sized information are videos and links. Links generally provide access to a piece of content outside the application. Videos can be played either from within the application or from outside it.
• Evaluation: This involves the various content formats used to evaluate the progress of the learners after they are done with the courses. The various formats used are:
  • Practice tests and assignments: Providing relevant ways to assess the learning of your users is as important as the content you create to help your users learn. This helps users to implement their learning in a practice setup and gives you a fair idea of how engaging and effective your content is for your learners.
  • External certificates and evaluations: You may also choose to outsource the evaluation and rewarding part to an external vendor of repute in the same field. You can maybe keep an option for the users to upload their certificates on your LMS system once they receive it. The same goes for external evaluations where the users can upload their signed scorecards onto the LMS system after being graded. This system not only offers a badge of credibility but will also make the learning relevant for the users in a certain field.

Some of the most popular types of content used in LMSs are:

• Powerpoint slides

• PDF guides

• Reports

• Whitepapers

• Charts and graphs

• Podcasts

• Webinars

• Slideshare 

• Case studies

• Illustrations and GIFs

• Infographics

• Simulations

• Checklists

• Ebooks

• Blog posts

• Interviews

Creating Content for Learning Management Systems – Best Practices for Trainers

Creating content for learners isn’t an easy task. In today’s fast-paced world, the best content that works for employees and students are those which are relevant, engaging, practical, and bite-sized. Ultimately, learners are looking for information that they can understand in the simplest way possible and apply it effectively in their respective fields. 

Some tips to help you create the ideal content for your learners are:

• Crack the Why: It’s a busy world today. Just like you are busy, so are your learners. Creating a long and winding course without nailing the points how it will benefit the users will mean that they will lose interest soon. It’s important to elucidate before your learners begin the course what they’ll learn, what are the different parts in the course and how much time they’ll take to complete, and what they’ll finally gain out of it so as to help them remain invested and engaged. A great way to do this can be through organising your entire program into specific learning outcomes that can help you decide on the best content format that can match the particular objective. For example, if you’re trying to create a training program for the employees in your organisation to develop a particular skill, then including a case study that demonstrates the skill in action can help in better retention. 

• Remember the Who: Once you’ve finalised what you’re going to include in the content, you have to figure out who’s going to deliver the content, in other words, the subject matter expert (the SME). How engaging your content will be depends on how knowledgeable and interesting your SME is. Having an SME who’s renowned in the industry host your live workshops or webinars can really hook your audience. However, keep an eye out for the SME’s schedules to ensure a consistent commitment. 

• Create an engaging learning path: It’s not just the content that matters but also how it’s organised. A group of haphazardly ordered content, even if relevant, doesn’t serve a purpose. Grouping the entire content under similar topics and all the relevant topics under specific modules can help create focused learning objectives. A great way to organise your content is to start with simple topics and ascend on the difficulty level slowly. This will also help to keep your learners hooked and help them progress at a manageable pace. For example, the course can start with basic explanations and definitions, maybe in the form of infographics to help them retain the information better, and end with practical evaluations and assessments such as quizzes. 

• Cater to a wide range of learning styles: Every learner has a different learning style and preference. While some may prefer to learn through visual formats, some do better with audio ones. It’s important for you to devise a program that contains a healthy mix of audio, visual, and kinesthetic content so that everyone feels engaged. You can assign different skills and knowledge to different content formats such as written docs, graphic charts, or video interviews. You also need to take care to match specific learning objectives to specific content formats to ensure optimum retention. 

• Give active learning a shot: Choosing a purely theoretical approach to deliver  content can backfire and drain out the interest of employees in completing the modules leading to lesser engagement. Creating a healthy balance of active and passive content in this case can help in making the content consumable to all learners. Some examples of active content can be activities that nurture the thinking and problem-solving abilities of learners while some examples of passive content can be listening to a podcast or watching a video interview. A classic example of active content can also be simulations. This works really well in the customer service industry where you can include a role-playing activity based on common customer issues. This can be a great way to train your employees in better customer service. 

• Create bite-sized content: In today’s fast-paced world, no one has the time to go through pages and pages of content to grasp a single concept. When it comes to creating great e-learning content, a bite-sized approach is the best. One thing to remember is that less content means that it has to be precise, relevant, and to-the-point. One approach you can use while creating bite-sized content is to plan what to leave out instead of what to include. Chucking out all the excess content will leave you only with the ones which are essential. Incorporating micro-learning principles in your learning program can also create a fast and easy learning experience. Finally, before releasing the content, take a look at the amount of time it’ll take to complete the content, and try to keep it under manageable hours. 

• Keep the quality in mind: Don’t be hasty in creating content for your learners. Take your time to create a learning program that will be worth the time of your learners. A hastily put-together content, badly shot interviews, or content filled with typos can ruin the motivation of the learners to go through the entire content and seriously affect the engagement. To avoid an unpleasant learning experience, make sure to maintain the right quality standards while shooting videos, recording a podcast, designing an infographic, or writing a blog post. For videos, you can make sure that there are no background noises or issues with voice clarity or any other distractions. When it comes to writing content, ensure that there are no spelling errors; always make sure to do a copy check before releasing the document. 

• Don’t compromise on originality: In a world crowded with content curation, it may be tempting for you to sift through a collection of articles, videos, podcasts, or blog posts to create a resource. But there’s only so much you can achieve with curated content. Adding content from various sources will surely give you an added advantage and offer a diverse perspective, but unless you have your unique voice somewhere in there, it’ll fail to create an impact on your learners. It’s important to ensure that at least 50% of the content in your training program is unique and not available anywhere else on the internet.

What are the Various Use Cases of LMSs?

Online training management systems have a variety of use cases spanning a wide range of industries. In a world with shortening attention spans, online training LMSs have helped in retaining high engagement of learners as well as offered analytics support to admins to measure the effectiveness of their learning programs. 

Learning Management Systems can meet the training needs of any organisation as well as complement classroom training in case of educational institutions. Once you’ve finalised the LMS you wish to purchase based on the features you’re looking for, you can start getting the desired industry-specific outcomes. 

Below are the different industry use-cases for LMSs: 

• Employee Training

  Most HR managers and L&D managers strive to get employee training right. A look at your objectives, budgets, and other factors can help you finalise if getting an LMS can help you or not. Choosing the right LMS for corporate training is of the utmost importance, sometimes even more than investing in fresh human resources or more training materials. An efficient corporate Learning Management System will definitely make employee training a faster and simpler process for you more than even a star trainer.

  Corporate learning management systems can certainly give you an extra edge to your training programs. A centralised and flexible mode of learning will help all employees to get standardised training at their convenient schedules. Moreover, gamification options in corporate LMS software can help keep employees engaged and create an exciting learning environment. Using simulation techniques, AR/VR and AI technologies, you can create immersive learning experiences for employees, at the same time upskillng them to be at par with industry standards. 

• Compliance Training

  Most companies have a constant influx of fresh workforce into their team. They want all workers to be quickly inducted into the work environment and be familiar with all work processes. However, various aspects of your organisation such as products or services, rules and regulations, and procedures don’t remain the same over time. It’s a cumbersome process to induct every single employee, new or old, through classroom training. 

  This is where online course management systems come in; simply updating the changes in procedures or rules in the software is enough with the employees updating themselves on the same at their own convenience. Using a corporate e-learning platform  for compliance training can help in boosting the confidence of employees, increase productivity, as well as equip them with necessary skills. 

• Sales Training

  Ultimately, all companies aim for an increase in their revenue. The department that directly impacts this is sales. Sales training is thus an important part of any organisation’s core processes. Having Learning Management System software that helps in sales enablement is one of the best ways to keep your entire sales team ready to convert every opportunity into revenue. 

  A sales training LMS can not only help you in creating new sales training programs but also help improve your existing sales techniques. With a proper list of goals in mind, you can design and publish relevant training modules that meet specific learning objectives, and can bring desired outcomes. Effective training in the end will boost your sales team’s morale as well as your company revenue. 

  You can make your program more effective by taking feedback from your sales team about the possible scenarios or issues plaguing them, to which the course can offer solutions through case studies or simulations. 

• Customer Training

  Customer service has become an indispensable part of any organisation’s core processes. With the feedback of customers now becoming more important than ever, a customer training LMS is not a should-have any more, rather a must-have. 

  Since most companies today are customer-focused, a customer training software is essential for your customer’s online training process and increasing customer engagement. This works best for companies who provide a product or service and needs a guide to explain how to use it to get the best benefits out of it. In this scenario, a customer training LMS works best. 

  This is also where the choice of your content formats, the quality of your content, and the relevance of the information provided comes into play. Having a firm idea about your target audience will also help you to fine-tune your content to meet the exact needs of your customers. Finally, using the options for brand integration can help you to create a strong brand image in the minds of the customer. 

• Academic Training

  When it comes to choosing an online education software platform, it’s important to keep an eye out for the right features to meet your exact needs. The best academic training LMS will benefit teachers, students, and other academic professionals alike. 

  An academic training LMS can be ideal for personalised learning and social learning experiences that can complement traditional classroom learning for your students. These Learning Management Systems can make the teaching process simpler by allowing all courses to be organised in one software, accessible to all students. It also becomes easier to take practical evaluations and assign grades to individual students. Lastly, it helps students and experts to collaborate freely and helps clear any doubts and questions on any topic and get direct feedback on their assignments. 

LMS Pricing Models: Which Should I Go For?

One of the important factors to consider when choosing an LMS is cost. An LMS software will be ideal only if the LMS pricing aligns with the budget and goals of your business. 

When looking at LMS software cost, here are the LMS pricing models that you can choose from: 

• Pay per user: In this type of an LMS pricing structure, the charge is levied for each user that uses the LMS. Hosting the LMS is the responsibility of the vendor; in most cases, these are cloud-based LMSs. Hence you won’t have to spend much in maintaining the LMS, rather can focus on creating quality content for your users. 

• Pay per registered user: In this sort of a setup, the payment is made for each user who is registered on the LMS. In order to access the Learning Management Systems platform, the user will have to login with a username and password. This setup works really well for organisations who plan to monetise their training courses. 

• Pay per active user: This is one of the more economical options. In this case, you only pay for the users who are actively using the LMS software. There are two popular approaches to this pricing model. In one, the user who accesses the software within the billing cycle is charged. So if you login initially, the entire course will be available for free to you after that. In the second one, every active user is charged per month. So you will be charged for every month provided you’re active. 

• Licensing: In this sort of a pricing setup, you’ll have to pay an annual subscription fee for using the software. Some vendors may also require additional forms of commitment such as one sign-up in a year. All upgrades will be at an extra annual cost. 

• Perpetual License: If you don’t want to worry about regular monthly payments, then you can opt for complete ownership of the Learning Management Systems software. Also known as a perpetual license, this involves paying a one-time fee to get full access to the software. However, you may have to pay extra for any upgrades or updates.

• Freemium: If you run on a strict budget, you can choose some of the free options too such as open-source LMS software and a freemium LMS software. While an open-source software will be completely free to use, you may require prior programming knowledge to customise the codes. A freemium LMS software will be less technical but will also have fewer features. In most cases, it’s a basic version of premium LMS software that’ll not have the tech support or third-party integrations. However, you may be able to add all of these features at an additional monthly cost. 

Learning Management Systems: What does the future hold?

As the use of computers and smartphones spike globally and internet speeds rise exponentially, e-learning through learning management systems are slowly dominating the learning and training industry. Research says that the global e-learning market is expected to amount to $300 billion by 2025. 

In the past few years, there have also been massive improvements in mobile network performance, with mobile apps and m learning becoming more and more popular. On the go learning is now a reality with learners being able to access and consume content of their choice anytime from any location. 

With the growing innovations in E-Learning technology, here are some trends that point towards how the future of LMSs will shape out. 

Trends in Learning Management systems

• Adaptive Learning: In the adaptive learning style, all resources, activities, and assignments are tailored to meet the unique needs, pace, and learning styles of individual learners. An example of this will be using previously established algorithms and assignments for a particular student instead of a random and standardised assessment for all students designed by a teacher. Also known as a personalised learning approach, it basically tries to do away with the one-size-fits-all learning technique. Since around 58% of employees prefer to learn at their own pace, this type of training approach helps to adapt the course as per each individual’s unique strengths and weaknesses. Adaptive learning is slowly gaining more adoption across companies and institutions and this is expected to just grow in the future. 

• Microlearning: It’s common for learners to be daunted by the prospect of huge, long-term courses. The same courses, when broken down into manageable chunks such as modules, projects, and activities have ensured better retention of learners and better course completion rates. Microlearning has proven itself to experts and instructors as a learning technique that better engages learners and boosts productivity. 

• Continuous learning: Research suggests that around 52% of HR personnels feel that there is a severe skill shortage and a growing discrepancy between the skills required for a job and the skills possessed by job applicants. To overcome this obstacle for both employers and employees, a continuous learning process is the key. Skill-building activities initiated by learning and development professionals ensure that employees are able to upgrade themselves to the industry standards and bridge the skill gap. It’s also a great way to retain employees since around 94% of employees prefer to stick to a company for a longer time which invests in improving their learning and developing their skills. 

• Social Learning: As a concept, social learning is quite old, however, the techniques have changed in the modern age. Several social learning approaches such as online forums, group study chat rooms, and file-sharing platforms have led to seamless collaboration between learners from different parts of the world and created a common and interactive learning environment. That co-learners can offer support from anywhere, be it a cafe, their homes, or in transit, has helped boost productivity to a great extent. When it comes to the corporate field, around 75% of L&D professionals have adopted the social learning approach for their organisations.

• On-demand learning: With the rise of remote work, traditional learning has suffered a setback. Since more and more employees are opting for the remote work lifestyle, it becomes difficult to bring them all together in one classroom. This calls for on-demand learning where learners from any part of the world can access lectures in an online LMS software even while sitting in different time zones.

• Gamified learning: This is one of the biggest trends in the e-learning space. Introducing interactive learning through games, quizzes,leaderboards and more not only increases the engagement levels of learners but also their retention ability. This is why the best LMS platforms will have in-built gamification elements in them. 

• Emerging technologies: Several new technologies are finding applications in LMSs to better fulfill the requirements of both learners and organisations. One of the most popular innovations is video learning. As a study reveals that around 75% of learners are prone to watch a video more than read a report, so video is slowly becoming a more preferred choice of learning, leading to higher engagement and retention. Artificial intelligence or AI based learning tools such as chatbots and voice search is also bringing in more sophistication to the adaptive learning approach. The entry of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications such as 360 degree visuals and graphic overlays are also changing the learning dynamics greatly. Finally, with the rise in smartphone use, mobile learning is slowly becoming the norm.

Explore the Best Learning Management System with AlphaLearn

Learning Management Systems have revolutionised how organisations approach training and development. They provide a seamless, efficient, and scalable solution for companies to manage educational programs, ensuring learners have the flexibility and tools to succeed. 

The benefits of implementing an LMS are evident, whether for corporate training, academic purposes, or professional development. Companies aiming for growth and efficiency should explore these platforms to enhance their training capabilities.

AlphaLearn continues to stand out due to its user-friendly design, robust features, and support, making it an ideal choice for organisations across India looking to modernise their training strategies. So why wait? Get in touch with our team immediately and create a scalable growth trajectory for business professionals such as yourself.