How to choose a Learning Management System - Part 3: Some final suggestions

This is our third and final blog post in the series of joint blog posts with Clint Smith at LearnWorks about choosing a Learning Management System (LMS).

Sort your blended learning design, development and delivery capabilities needs early

One issue that needs to be resolved early is who is going to design and develop the learning materials, or “courseware”. The traditional discussion was about whether to do the content (meaning self-paced modules) in-house, or outsource or buy it. If you were planning internal development capability, the focus should turn to which content development tool is best because the authoring tools built into LMSs are typically very limited. This was a necessary set of discussions and decisions, and a very big deal when eLearning meant only self-paced learning modules. However, it is a much more complex question if you are also offering facilitated online courses in a virtual learning environment such as Totara. Your online trainers then have a role in developing and maintaining the content (their course site) and managing the communication tools, so they will need training and support in these aspects of community management. The classic front-end “sign-off” approaches to design and development of “modules” won’t work because “content” is also being generated by the facilitator – and the learners – throughout the course. Content may include small modules (or SCORM-compliant content the LMS can manage), but it is more likely to be video clips, PDFs or any other digital resources added to the site at any time.

The move to blended learning often means there is a serious capability- building challenge. As well as building their new platform, organisations also find themselves needing to work on:

• new roles and capabilities for their learning and development team
• online facilitation and collaboration skills for trainers
• a new or improved system for developing and managing learning content
• new processes and policies.

This all requires sorting out, clarifying what your organisation can reasonably achieve in the short and medium term.

It’s about more than buying a piece of software

The complexities of blended learning mean you are not just comparing a software “product” out of the box – you are comparing the service add-ons that a particular provider can give you over time to grow your capacity.

Such services will include:

Training
Training will involve basic sessions on how to use the LMS, but might also offer support in designing, developing and delivering blended learning, which are complex skills.
Integration
Enabling the new LMS to talk to your current systems, for example exchanging data with your HR system. 
Add ons
Adding major system functions and components, such as high-end authoring or learning content management, which may require additional specialised modules or third-party applications as part of the suite the LMS offers.

The clearer you are about your processes, your capability gaps and your strategies to fill them, the better you can choose the provider and LMS solution to fit your needs.

Be prepared for integration: it often ain’t easy

In most LMS selection processes, organisations will begin with a requirement “ that, “The LMS needs to integrate with current systems (HR/payroll etc.)”.

Integrations are never simple, which is why integration work is one of the more profitable parts of an LMS provider’s business. Most HR systems are complex pieces of legacy enterprise software that have been highly customised; just because it’s SAP doesn’t mean it works in the same way as other SAP systems. LMSs are increasingly flexible at connecting to a variety of data formats and systems, but there may be a lot of housekeeping to do on the system before it can do business with the LMS.

Reducing the unknowns and complexity will reduce your costs. A couple of ways to do that are:

• Do an early scoping project with an LMS consultant on what needs to be integrated, and what modifications to current applications may be required.
• Plan for a staged implementation process for your LMS based on the scoping findings.

Don’t reinvent the lms

The core functions of most LMSs are the same – so think more about what you’ll need to support your future L&D strategies.

LMSs are now mature platforms. The core functionalities are provided by almost all of them. Specifically listing every functional element, such as “a learner should be able to open a SCORM object and their progress tracked”, is a waste of time. Many of these core functions can be taken for granted. We have seen some learning requirements that are just brief, simple statements such as “all the standard functions of an LMS”. Both over-specifying and under-specifying can make it hard to discriminate and choose.

These strategies can help to keep your specifications relevant:

1.  Focus the specification around your vision for learning and development.
2. Think about what your needs are going to be in the future.
3. Think about how you want to work with an LMS vendor. It is going to be a long-term relationship and you need to make sure that your organisation can work with the vendor. 

Base your requirements on what the market can offer

In the past, IT departments tended to build their specifications from the ground up – as if they were inventing the LMS – and then it was up to the market to prove they could deliver what was required. In reality, you can only buy what's out there.

Have a look at the market first. Begin with the capabilities offered by one LMS as a working benchmark and it will save you from defining the requirements from scratch. Maybe pick one that is fully featured and do a trial. Don’t talk in abstract requirements – pick one and explore it. We usually use Totara because they have done a good job of clarifying features and the groupings, including core functions required in corporate settings, and they are clear about how content authoring fits into the mix. The advantage of this approach is that you begin to use the market language and not internal language. If the language comes from the business you might have your own unique terminology that doesn't line up with the vendor’s lingo, so your tender documents are confusing and inefficient for everyone involved. Also, it makes sense to choose to explore a benchmark product that is in your price range. It’s easy to identify who is expensive - some vendors will not work with organisations with fewer than 1000 people. Some of the open source LMSs are harder to cost because of the variations in the ways vendors host and implement the platform.

Get some external help

Understanding what the market has to offer is not easy. This is where some external help from a consultant can be useful. When you are looking for a consultant keep an eye out for someone who can help you make the linkages between your learning vision and the technologies needed to support it.

Sort out how you’ll be authoring content

Some LMSs enable you to build courses inside of them. In most cases we suggest that you avoid this type of built-in authoring tool, because:

they typically lack engaging interactive activities and are often really only content management systems and not interactive authoring systems most of the time you cannot export the courses created inside an LMS, so it is harder to move to another LMS in the long term one authoring system might not be suitable for all courses; separating your authoring from the LMS means you can choose the right authoring tool for a project.

Think of your LMS as a suite of products

Almost every LMS solution is a suite of products, not just an LMS, which can be confusing, especially if you have a non-specialist representative group involved in the process (which you should). What you are really asking is: who has an LMS solution which provides virtual-learning-environment capability, integrates well with the self-paced core, and includes the other functions we require (e.g. learning content management, course management, virtual classroom)? We find that it is useful to develop an overview diagram of how you think the functions fit together and see if this aligns with the LMS process diagrams. This also gives a concrete focus for the “talking to the existing system” discussions.

Many HR systems have some LMS functionality. But mostly these are just SCORM players that lack any support for integrated blended learning.

Talk with vendors and look at different LMSs

Before you begin the formal Request stage, ask some venders to do a demo. Get the group of people who will be choosing the LMS into the room and watch the presentation. This will enable you to get a feel for the product and the “personality” of the vender. The group is able to share their unknowns and scope out what they don’t know, and pick up some of the industry language. Afterwards you can chat about what does and what does not appeal. This is a critical step – if you see vendors only after the Request you are asking for trouble. We find that these demos spark extremely useful conversations about an actual LMS that are far more constructive than the otherwise abstract discussions that usually take place.

It’s all about implementation

The finishing line is not when you’ve installed the LMS. Indeed, this is probably the midpoint of the project. The end point should be around one year down the track, when you have multiple programs running and you can think about the LMS holistically and evaluate what has worked (and what has not).

The whole process should be planned and include what happens before and after the LMS has been installed. An LMS is just the technology to help you achieve your vision. For example, if you are planning a performance management approach, you will need to establish a competency framework (roles and skills) before you can set up the LMS to support it. In some instances the LMS software has a greater capability than the human systems feeding it. For this reason, finding a vendor to support your organisation through the whole process is a must. Don’t wait for the LMS to be installed before you start planning how to use it – these two processes should be concurrent and inform one another.

It has been interesting experience to write the series of blog posts over the past few weeks. We will soon be releasing our How to Choose an LMS eBook based on these blog posts. 

Update 15th of May 2015