It’s been 2 years since the COVID-19 has shaken the world. This has led to a drastic change in the learning and development strategies of businesses and educational institutes. The learning paradigm is shifting digital and people are spending most of their time online.

With digitization at its peak, many schools and colleges are looking for the right Learning Management System (LMS) to manage their vast syllabus and conduct examinations. So what are the steps schools must follow to choose the right LMS that will benefit students the most? Before we get to that, let’s dig in to know what exactly an LMS is and why every school needs it?

What is a Learning Management System?

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a web-based solution to create, manage and deliver online courses to a large audience. You can use an LMS as a digital repository to store all your teaching materials, instructions, student and faculty information, user-generated content and student’s feedback, all on one platform. Nowadays, many LMS vendors also offer features to assess your students’ knowledge and track their progress.

By fostering artificial intelligence in education, you can streamline various learning and development programs for your students and offer them the best learning experience. 

5 Reasons Why Schools Need The Right LMS

Keeps all data in one place

An helps you store all the data including contact information of students and teachers, course materials, students’ assignments, exam papers, etc at a single platform. You can also create an online library containing all the relevant courses your students may need to extend their knowledge and gain skills.

Track students’ progress

The right Learning Management System enables you to track your students’ progress. How many parts of the curriculum have your students covered and in how much time? You can find it all on your desktop. Many LMS portals report and analyze students’ performance based on their exam results and thus help you identify their weak areas.

Saves time 

Having the right LMS at schools will help both faculty and students save time. From taking attendance to scheduling exams, your LMS will manage everything leaving you with some quality time to create quality content. Since online content can be created and accessed from anywhere, you will save time invested in commuting to work and distributing all the course materials to your students.

Reduces learning costs

Online learning leaves out the cost of paper and pen used in the traditional teaching structure. With an LMS, you and your audience will only have to pay the cost of an internet connection to access and manage the content and learn the required skills.

Keep students engaged

With the right LMS, you can add effective tools to your courses to make them more interactive and engaging. Many LMSs allow you to gamify your content to imbibe a healthy competition among your students. This will help your students to get a better understanding of the concepts.

You can also deliver content in multiple formats like in the form of videos or infographics to spark interest among your learners and help them enjoy the learning process.

These reasons confirm that introducing an LMS to your school will not only help the learners improve their learning experiences and get all prepared for their future jobs but also help the teachers and administrators to save time in delivering various learning management processes.

 But how should you choose the right LMS that caters to all the needs of students, teachers, administrators and management? Let’s find out.
 

How To Choose The Right LMS For Schools?

Listed below is the step-by-step guide to choosing the right LMS that serves best the requirements of schools.
 

Define requirements

This is an important step before the implementation of new technology in any organisation. You must know exactly why you need the LMS for schools. Jot down the points why you need it? What processes are you going to apply to it? How much content are you going to upload to it? What is the maximum size of your audience? And so on.

Before choosing the right LMS for schools, you must have the following data ready.

• Type of users
• Audience size
• Learning tools users possess (mobile, tablets or desktops)

For instance, if you find out that most of the students use smartphones to access online classes, then choose the LMS that suits best as a mobile app.

Jot down the technical features

Make a list of features you need in LMS for schools. You can look for the following basic features:

• Content creation in multiple formats
• Scheduled courses
• Adding and assigning exams
• Automated marking scheme
• Tracking the progress of students
• Communication tools
• Feedback from students

Choose the LMS that offers you all the above features in a single solution. 

Off the shelf or Customised

Decide whether you need an off-the-shelf LMS with all the basic features ready-made for use or you need a customised LMS in which you can update the features according to your needs. In case you are planning to use the LMS for a long time, you will need to modify the LMS features to sync with the time. Then you should look for a customisable LMS. It will allow you to add new features or change the existing features to meet the requirements of your students.

Opt for Blended Learning 

Online learning is not always the best option to embed knowledge among your students. It is necessary to find the right balance between the traditional teaching paradigm and online education. That’s where the need for blended learning or hybrid learning comes.

Blended learning is a set of features that allow teachers to deliver effective learning to students in and out of the classroom. It is an approach to deliver the best of both words of learning and maximise output. Choose the LMS that allows you to adopt a blended learning option to ensure a flexible and efficient learning environment.

Integration of effective learning tools

Make the list of learning tools that your students need for better interaction and engagement. Some surefire effective learning tools that LMS for schools need are:
 

• Video conferencing tool
• Discussion forums
• Gamification
• Mobile learning
• Course selling
• Certificates on completion of courses

Choose the right LMS that allows you integration with these effective tools to boost the learning experiences of your students and help them achieve their learning goals.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right LMS for schools is quite a challenging task. Select the one that saves you time and money yet provides you with the best features that cater to the needs of your students. 

We at Coconut Learning offer you customisable LMS for schools in both web and app versions. To get more information about our solution and its features, click here.