What Is A Learning Management System? A Complete Guide

Many organizations cherish their learning management system (LMS) as an essential component of their L&D function.

As of 2023, there are over 73.8 million LMS users worldwide, so what’s all the fuss about?

This article will help you understand what an LMS is, how they work, types, features, benefits, and how to choose the right LMS for your needs.

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There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive in.

What Is A Learning Management System? 

A learning management system (LMS) is a software platform for creating, managing, delivering, and tracking educational or training programs.

It enables organizations, educational institutions, and businesses to create and store training materials and track their efficacy. The goal of an LMS is to make learning more organized, accessible, effective, and scalable.

What Is An LMS Used For?

In general, LMSs are used for:

• Corporate training: Many organizations use LMS platforms to train employees, onboard new hires, or meet compliance requirements.
• Educational institutions: Schools and universities use LMSs for remote learning, course management, and assessments.
• Professional development: Organizations use LMS to provide learning and development and skill-building opportunities for employees.

4 Main Types Of LMS

LMSs come in a few different flavors depending on your needs:

1. Academic LMS

• Description: As the name suggests, these are designed specifically for schools, universities, and other academic institutions to manage student learning and courses.
• Advantages:
  • Features for course management, grading, student tracking, and communication.
  • Often integrates with student information systems (SIS).
• Disadvantages:
  • May not have features suited for corporate environments.
• Examples: Blackboard, Schoology.

2. Corporate LMS

• Description: Tailored for businesses to train employees, manage compliance, and track professional development.
• Advantages:
  • Includes corporate-specific features such as compliance tracking, certifications, and onboarding programs.
  • Often integrates with other business systems like HR software.
• Disadvantages:
  • Can be expensive.
• Examples: TalentLMS, Docebo.

3. Learning experience platforms (LXP)

• Description: A newer type of LMS focused on delivering a more personalized and engaging learning experience.
• Advantages:
  • Personalized learning paths and AI-driven recommendations.
  • More social and collaborative learning features.
• Disadvantages:
  • May be more costly than traditional LMS platforms.
  • Can be complex to set up and manage.
• Example: Degreed, EdCast.

4. Specialized LMS

• Description: Custom-built LMS for specific industries or fields (e.g., healthcare, aviation).
• Advantages:
  • Tailored content and features for specific industry requirements.
  • Compliance with industry standards and regulations.
• Disadvantages:
  • Limited use cases outside of their specialized fields.
• Examples: Relias for healthcare, LatitudeLearning for franchising.

Who Needs An LMS?

Many different types of organizations can benefit from using LMS software. Main users include:

1. Corporations and businesses

• Employee training and development: Businesses of all sizes use LMSs to train employees on new skills, onboard new hires, and facilitate continuous professional development.
• Compliance training: Many industries require mandatory compliance training (e.g., safety, data protection), and an LMS automates and tracks these efforts to ensure all employees are up-to-date.
• Sales and product training: Sales teams benefit from just-in-time product training to stay informed about the latest offerings, which can improve their performance.
• Remote workforce training: As remote work becomes more common, businesses need to provide scalable and accessible training for employees working from various locations.

2. Educational institutions

• Schools and higher education: Schools and universities use LMS platforms to manage courses, deliver online classes, administer assessments, and facilitate student collaboration.
• E-Learning providers: Institutions or companies that specialize in online learning (e.g., MOOCs) rely on an LMS to structure their courses, handle enrollment, and deliver content.
• Teacher-student communication: LMSs enable real-time communication between teachers and students, supporting hybrid or fully remote educational models.

3. Nonprofits and NGOs

• Volunteer and staff training: Nonprofits use LMS platforms to train their staff and volunteers on various topics, including organizational policies, program delivery, and fieldwork best practices.
• Global outreach: NGOs with global operations use LMSs to deliver training across regions and ensure that all personnel are aligned with their mission and protocols, regardless of location.

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4. Healthcare organizations

• Medical training and certifications: Hospitals, clinics, and medical institutions need to ensure that their staff (e.g., doctors, nurses) are up-to-date with certifications, procedures, and new medical technologies.
• Compliance and safety training: Healthcare providers need regular training on health and safety regulations, patient data protection (e.g., HIPAA), and proper procedures for handling sensitive medical information.

5. Government agencies

• Regulatory compliance training: Government agencies often require regular training in areas like cybersecurity, data privacy, ethics, and regulatory compliance. An LMS ensures all staff members meet these requirements.
• Public service training: Government employees benefit from ongoing training programs focused on new policies, technologies, and public service skills.

How Do LMSs Work?

An LMS works through a combination of content management, secure user access, real-time communication, content delivery, and data analytics, all powered by databases, encryption, APIs, and other back-end technologies. 

The system allows for scalable, efficient learning by automating many aspects of training, from content delivery to tracking and reporting. Warning: This next section gets a little technical!

1. Content management system integration

• How it works:
  • The LMS has a backend ontent management system where administrators create, organize, and manage courses.
  • The system stores the learning materials (videos, documents, quizzes, etc.) in a structured way, using databases to catalog and retrieve the content efficiently.
  • When learners access a course, the LMS dynamically pulls the content from its storage (typically hosted on servers or cloud storage) and displays it through a user-friendly interface.
• Technical process:
  • Content is uploaded to the LMS, which stores it in a database using metadata (e.g., course title, description, tags) to enable efficient search and retrieval.
  • The LMS uses a learning object repository, which stores and reuses learning assets across different courses or modules.

2. User authentication and role management

• How it works:
  • Users (learners, instructors, administrators) log into the system using credentials. This login process is managed via authentication protocols (e.g., single sign-on, username/password).
  • Based on their role, the LMS controls the permissions they have: what content they can view, edit, or manage.
• Technical process:
  • When a user logs in, the LMS checks their credentials against a user database.
  • The system uses Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), meaning different roles have different levels of access (e.g., a learner can view courses but an administrator can upload content and manage users).
  • The system tracks user sessions to ensure secure access and maintain data integrity.

3. Content delivery through a learning path

• How it works:
  • Once logged in, learners can access courses via a user interface. The LMS organizes the courses into learning paths or sequences.
  • The LMS delivers content to the user’s device by streaming media (videos, animations) or serving web-based resources (text, quizzes).
• Technical process:
  • Content is delivered via HTTP/HTTPS protocols and rendered in the browser or app.
  • Some systems use content delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure fast and reliable access to multimedia content by distributing it across multiple servers closer to the user.
  • The LMS may also use HTML5 to deliver content compatible with different devices, including mobile and desktop.
  • For mobile learning, LMS often offers offline access by downloading content locally to the learner’s device and syncing progress when reconnected to the internet.

4. Tracking and reporting using a learning record store

• How it works:
  • As learners engage with the material (completing modules, answering quizzes, etc.), the LMS tracks their actions.
  • All interactions (course completion, time spent on modules, quiz scores) are stored in the system.
  • Administrators and instructors can view reports on learner progress, course engagement, and completion.
• Technical process:
  • Learning record store (LRS): The LMS uses an LRS to capture and store detailed learning data. The LRS records learning activities in the form of xAPI (Experience API) statements, such as "John completed Quiz 1."
  • The LMS then compiles this data into structured reports, which can be accessed by administrators.
  • SQL or NoSQL databases are often used to store learner records, and data visualization tools are embedded to generate insights.

5. Assessment and feedback mechanism

• How it works:
  • Learners take assessments (quizzes, assignments), and the LMS provides real-time or delayed feedback based on performance.
  • The LMS can automatically grade some assessments (e.g., multiple-choice quizzes) and store the results.
• Technical process:
  • Automated grading algorithms: For automatically graded assessments, the LMS compares user responses with pre-defined correct answers stored in the database and computes the score.
  • For open-ended assignments, instructors manually review submissions, which are stored on the server and retrieved for grading.
  • Feedback is delivered to learners using email notifications or dashboard alerts based on preset rules.

6. Communication and collaboration tools

• How it works:
  • Learners can interact with each other and instructors via discussion boards, live chats, or virtual classrooms within the LMS.
• Technical process:
  • WebSockets or real-time communication protocols are used to enable live chats or real-time interactions.
  • Discussion boards use standard CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) to allow users to post and reply to messages, which are stored in a database.
  • Video conferencing tools are often integrated using APIs (e.g., Zoom, Webex) to allow live instruction sessions.

7. Certification and badge issuance

• How it works:
  • Upon course completion, the LMS awards certificates or badges to learners. These credentials can be downloaded or displayed on user profiles.
• Technical process:
  • Trigger-based workflows are used to issue certificates. When a learner completes a course, the LMS triggers the creation of a certificate based on pre-designed templates.
  • Badges are typically generated using OpenBadges technology, which stores metadata about the badge (issuer, criteria) that can be verified across different platforms.

8. Integration with other HR Systems

• How it works:
  • LMSs often integrate with other business systems like an HRIS/HRMS or onboarding software to share data (e.g., employee performance, course completion).
  • Integrating with your HRIS can streamline workflows, such as automatically assigning training based on employee roles.
• Technical process:
  • APIs (application programming interfaces) are used to connect the LMS with other software. For example, if the LMS integrates with an HRMS, an API call can update employee training records automatically.
  • Data syncing: Data synchronization protocols (e.g., SOAP, REST) ensure information is updated across systems in real-time.

Key LMS Features

Learning management systems are full of helpful features to improve the learning and development experience for everything involved. 

While I won’t go into all of them here, some key LMS features to look out for include:

1. Streamlined user management

Setting up individuals with the right permissions across groups of learners can be a time suck. A streamlined user management feature can help by:

• Automatically enrolling learners in training based on location, role, certification expiration, or other granular criteria.
• Enabling easy segmentation of learners into relevant groups.
• Map custom fields to users that reflect your internal data to optimize tracking, content assignment, and custom reporting.

2. Content authoring and management tools

The quality of this feature is crucial because L&D strategies are always evolving to meet organizational needs and the system needs to be frequently updated. Some capabilities to look out for:

• Content creation and authoring tools for multiple users, content types, and formats
• Course organization tools such as a course library or directory
• Automations to flag content for future updates
• Content distribution tools, including social media integrations
• SCORM capabilities that simplify the content creation process.

3. SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) and xAPI (Experience API

SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) and xAPI (Experience API) are two key standards for eLearning content, and their compliance is crucial in an LMS for interoperability, tracking, and reporting.

SCORM and xAPI compliance ensures that courses created using these standards can work across various platforms, providing consistency and saving development time.

4. Automated enrollment

A useful feature is to automate course enrollment, reminder notifications, certificate expiration alerts, and comprehensive audit-proof reporting.

This is especially useful for onboarding and mandatory health and safety and compliance training.

5. Learning portals

The best L&D programs are a mix of meeting organizational needs with those of the learner. As 

such, the best LMSs facilitate personalization through individual learning portals that help admins and learners create, access, and track personalized learning experiences.

LMS Benefits

LMSs are popular for a reason. From a business perspective, they can benefit your organization by:

1. Increasing productivity and efficiency

• Faster skill development: Employees can quickly acquire the skills they need to perform better in their roles, reducing time to competency.
• Automation of administrative tasks: Automates tasks like tracking learner progress, managing course enrollments, and sending reminders, freeing up time for your HR or L&D teams.

2. Improved business agility

• Rapid training deployment: In fast-paced industries or during periods of change, an LMS allows you to rapidly update and distribute new training content (e.g., product launches, new processes) across the organization without delays.
• Adaptability: As business needs change, new courses can be added to upskill employees quickly, helping the organization stay competitive and responsive to market trends.

3. Better employee performance

• Targeted training: Tailored learning paths ensure employees are learning exactly what they need to improve their performance and hit their personal and professional goals e.g. increased sales, better customer service, or higher operational efficiency.
• Performance analytics: LMS reporting allows you to correlate learning outcomes (course completions, assessments) with performance metrics, making it easier to identify the impact of training on business goals such as revenue growth, customer satisfaction, or product quality.

4. Faster onboarding and shorter time-to-value

• Streamlined onboarding: An LMS speeds up the onboarding process by delivering structured, consistent, and automated training for new hires, ensuring they become productive faster.
• Early employee contributions: New employees can complete onboarding training before or immediately after starting, allowing them to contribute value to the business more quickly.

5. Measurable ROI

• Training ROI tracking: With built-in analytics and integrations, an LMS helps track the efficacy and ROI of your training programs. You can track how training correlates with specific business outcomes, like productivity improvements, sales increases, or customer satisfaction.
• Data-driven decisions: Being able to easily monitor performance and skill gaps helps you make data-driven decisions about where to invest in additional training or development.

6. Improved compliance and risk management

• Automated compliance training: Ensures all employees complete mandatory training, such as safety or regulatory compliance, reducing the risk of costly violations and legal liabilities.
• Reduced Risk of Errors: Well-trained employees are less likely to make costly mistakes that could negatively impact operations, customer satisfaction, or reputation.

LMS Implementation

Successfully implementing a new LMS involves careful planning, coordination, and continuous improvement to ensure that it meets the organization's goals and is embraced by users.

Follow these steps to help ensure a successful LMS implementation that drives business outcomes, boosts employee engagement, and improves overall learning effectiveness.

1. Define clear objectives

• Why are you implementing an LMS? Determine the specific goals for your LMS. These could include improving employee performance, reducing training costs, automating compliance tracking, or improving customer or partner education.
• What outcomes do you expect? Set measurable goals, such as faster onboarding time, higher course completion rates, or improved assessment scores.

2. Select the right LMS

• Understand your requirements: Ensure the LMS fits your organization’s specific needs (corporate, educational, compliance-driven, etc.). Consider factors like:
  • Ease of Use: Is it user-friendly for both administrators and learners?
  • Scalability: Can it grow with your organization?
  • Customizability: Does it allow customization to match your L&D programs?
  • Integration capabilities: Can it integrate with existing systems (HR software, CRM, etc.)?
  • Mobile Compatibility: Does it support mobile learning, which is key for remote or field employees?
• Evaluate vendors: Research vendors thoroughly by asking for demos, reading reviews, and requesting customer references.
• Cross-functional involvement: Involve stakeholders from HR, IT, L&D, compliance, and management. Their input hepls ensure that the system meets various needs across the organization.
• End-user input: Engage learners early in the process to understand their learning preferences, so the LMS can be tailored to user experience (UX).

3. Create an implementation team

• Project manager: Assign a project manager who will be responsible for coordinating the implementation and ensuring it stays on track.
• Technical experts: Involve IT and other technical staff to ensure proper system integration and security.
• L&D professionals: Learning and development professionals should guide the structure of the courses and ensure training objectives are met.

4. Prepare learning content

• Content audit: Review existing training materials and decide what needs to be updated, converted, or created from scratch for the new LMS. This is also an opportunity to modernize content by adding videos, interactive elements, and gamification.
• Organize learning paths: Structure your courses into modules and learning paths that align with learner objectives and your organization’s goals (e.g., onboarding, compliance training, leadership development).
• Test course content: Test the effectiveness of the courses with a small group to identify areas for improvement before a full rollout.

6. Ensure data migration and integration

• Data migration: If you're switching from an old LMS or using multiple platforms, ensure that user data, training records, certifications, and course content are successfully migrated to the new system.
• System integration: Integrate the LMS with other business systems (e.g. performance management systems) to automate processes like enrollment, tracking, and reporting.

7. Train administrators and instructors

• Admin training: Ensure that your LMS administrators understand how to manage the system and are proficient in tasks such as user management, reporting, and content updates.
• Instructor training: Provide comprehensive training to course creators and instructors so they know how to build courses, track learner progress, and provide feedback.
• IT support: Ensure IT staff are trained to support technical issues, manage system updates, and troubleshoot integrations or user access problems.

8. Pilot test the system

• Run a pilot program: Before launching the LMS organization-wide, run a pilot with a small group of users. This helps you test the system's functionality, user interface, and content effectiveness without affecting the entire organization.
• Collect feedback: Gather feedback from pilot users to identify issues, understand user experience, and make necessary adjustments.

9. Launch the LMS with a clear communication strategy

• Internal marketing: Promote the LMS internally. Announce the launch through various channels (email, intranet, meetings) and emphasize the benefits, such as easy access to training, personal development, and career advancement.
• Set clear expectations: Clearly communicate what users should expect—what they need to do, how to access the LMS, and how it benefits them.
• Provide onboarding support: Offer tutorials, user guides, and even live support for users to quickly learn how to navigate and use the system effectively.

10. Monitor usage and gather feedback post-launch

• Track engagement: Use LMS analytics to monitor course enrollment, completion rates, and user activity. If engagement is low, identify barriers (e.g., system usability, content relevance) and address them.
• Surveys and feedback: Encourage learners and instructors to provide ongoing feedback about their experiences. Regular feedback helps in improving both the system and the training content.
• Adjust content: Continuously refine courses based on user feedback and performance data. Revise content that is underperforming or out of date.

11. Measure Success and ROI

• Assess learning outcomes: Compare learning results before and after implementation to measure the effectiveness of the LMS. Key metrics might include skill improvement, course completion rates, or employee productivity improvements.
• Evaluate ROI: Calculate cost savings from reduced training delivery expenses (travel, facilities, etc.) and improved employee performance to justify the LMS investment.
• Tie results to business outcomes: Assess whether the LMS is helping achieve broader business goals like faster onboarding, increased sales, or higher customer satisfaction.

How To Choose The Best LMS For You

There are numerous choices for LMS software on the market that you can use for your organization. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the providers available. Which authoring tools should you make use of?

It’s not an easy thing either—around 44% of companies are actively considering replacing the current LMS solution.

So, where should you start on this front?

Well, there are a number of factors on this front:

• The industry you are in
• The size of your organization
• The use cases that your organization has
• If you’re spread out, remote, or all in-office
• LMS features deemed essential for your organization
• The learning goals for your organization
• How much you value mobile learning
• Pricing—most LMS platforms are SaaS
• Overall UX—while they’ve gotten better, some of my personal experiences with a corporate LMS is they’re not the most intuitive when it comes to their user interface
• Enticing users to finish the learning activities. Some LMS’s offer initiatives like gamification to help individuals make their way through the training content and to measure learner progress

These are just a few factors that you’ll want to consider when deciding on a learning platform. There is no best LMS that's one-size-fits-all. 

Some of them will have free trials to give it a test run, and most will have a sales team to demo their service to you to determine your training needs. 

For further help, check out our pick of the best learning management systems and best enterprise learning management systems on the market today.

And, if you’re a smaller organization, see our breakdown of the best learning management systems for small businesses.

Need expert help selecting the right Learning Management System (LMS) Software?

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