What is an LMS?

An LMS, Learning Management System,
is a software tool that allows you to
create, share and monitor employee
training courses.

Ever since the internet came and took over our lives and our work, programmers have been creating online management systems, like learning management. Each management system does something unique that makes them specialized for their purpose. But the number of systems that became available diluted the meaning and made it hard for users and organizations to determine what’s best for them. Let’s take a quick look at Learning Management Systems (LMS) and what makes them specialized for learning!

What's LMS bringing to the table?

Learning management evolved into a different specialization of content management. This is where Fabric stepped up. So what does our platform provide that makes it especially suited for corporate learning?

Content structure

We, LMS developers realized that learning content simply is not structured like a website or blog. Your math textbook was not organized into categories with articles sorted by most likes. No, it was structured into chapters and lessons and started with foundational concepts that increased in complexity. Learning management systems needed to provide ways to structure content to improve learning, not encourage casual reading.

Progress tracking

The management part of learning means that there must be some record keeping on who has learned what. In schools this is done through certificates, diplomas and degrees — you get a physical piece of paper that signifies that you have successfully learned a specific set of skills and knowledge. This proof is necessary to show other people what you are able to do (e.g. get hired). An LMS needs to do the same thing if it’s going to be useful.

Assessment and marking

The other part of managing learning is assessing how the content was learned through assessment. We remember these from school as exams and report cards and, whether we liked it or not, they were an important part of our learning experience. It gave both students and teachers a tool to identify areas where the student needed help or where they could be challenged more. These functions are as useful in the workplace as they are in an academic setting.

Conclusion

Training departments that try to build their training programs on Sharepoint or WordPress will quickly run into problems when it comes to structuring their content in an optimal way for learning, providing proof that the training program has been completed and recording how well the learners internalized the knowledge. The results from these attempts are often kludgy and inefficient.

Learning management systems provided critical features that are specialized for learning in the areas of content structure, progress tracking, and assessment. They saw that content management systems were not equipped to handle learning and added features based on best practices in education and academia that everyone is familiar with like certificates, report cards and text books.

Learn more from our blog

What's an LMS and how it will help grow your organization