A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of e-learning education courses or training programs.
LMSs range from systems for managing training and educational
records to software for distributing online or blended/hybrid college courses over the Internet with features for online collaboration. Colleges and universities use LMSs to deliver online courses and augment on-campus courses. Corporate training departments use LMSs to deliver online training, as well as automate record-keeping and employee registration.
This rapid evolution of the LMS has brought about many changes in the e-learning field.
The question is, how will the LMS of the future look like? Well I’m no fortune teller but let’s just review some of the possibilities. What have been the trends and growth of LMS and where are we heading towards.
Cloud Based LMS
Various cloud based LMSs (Schoology, Edmodo, Coursesites) have started flourishing and I must say the pace they are coming, doesn’t seem like they’re only for a fortnight. Due to its flexibility, modernity and not to forget “free” services, LMS is growing in manifolds in just seconds. Cloud computing is emerging as an inexpensive, quick and efficient way of delivering training through LMS. Cloud-based LMSs have the capacity to bring down your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), something that has being largely overlooked during LMS vendor comparisons. The future LMS will increasingly be run on cloud for its agile, flexible and economic characteristics.
Personal Learning Environment (PLE)
Personal Learning Environments (PLE) in LMS are noticing a growing demand. PLEs are open systems that provide a structured model for e-learning. It helps the learners to manage their learning and has become a very popular feature of LMS.
Here’s a video predicting some future trends in the LMS. She lists four key additions to PLE that can enhance user experience, which in brief include:
- An interface that can be manipulated to meet end-user’s needs and preferences – like freedom to bring blog, YouTube, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn forms at one place for viewing – which they can utilize to develop and hone expertise anytime, anyplace.
- A semantic search function that understands and tracks user’s search intention and context.
- The PLE that would know learners’ interests and gaps in knowledge and skills and proactively suggest new information, courses, social communities and network for consideration.
- Facility for user-based content generation, to contribute knowledge and expertise through conversation and new content.
Gamification
According to Ambient Insight’s report – The 2011-2016 Worldwide Game-based Learning Market: All Roads Lead to Mobile, the worldwide game-based learning market reached $1.2 billion in 2011. As per estimates, the revenues will more than double to $2.5 billion by 2015. These figures underline growing dependency on games to attend the learning goal.
Research has proved that through gamification we have more engaging power and it enables learner to understand about strategies, management, decision-making, time management efficiently and in ways audio and reading never can.
While most of the current breeds of LMSs use a proprietary environment to create, run and track any game-like learning activity, the launch of Project Tin Can has brought in a common approach to designing, running and tracking games and simulations. The different thing about Tin Can is that it aims to ‘record’ a learner’s learning experiences (wherever and in whatever form they happen). A learning experience could happen outside any form of learning/training event and could be as simple as accessing, say, Facebook or Twitter.
So the learning experience comprising of so called, “monotonous” topics don’t tend to seem that monotonous anymore. Thanks to gamification.
Talent Management
I’m sure you must have heard of HRM in your marketing classes- The process of employing the right people at the right places. Talent Management can be called a subset of this where we use HR strategies to evaluate a talent and put it in its right spot.
Many companies have started integrating TM and LMS. While talent management helps in identifying key skills of an employee and the gaps in knowledge and skills or expertise required, an LMS helps in filling those gaps and improve job-oriented skills of the learner.
LMSs have always evolved and changed with time. There is no saying what changes the LMS will actually endure over the course of a years, but the truth remains that today’s LMS is not what it was 10 years before, and the LMS of tomorrow will be very different than what we can imagine now. What are your imaginations for the future of LMSs ?
This article originally appeared here: Upside Learning
