The LMS open source should serve your company to offer you the e-learning solution you need for the training of your students, not to give you problems. For this reason, it is important that you can assess the features offered by the platform, to know if it will be able to meet your specific needs.
In this article, we will show you how to evaluate the LMS your company is interested in using so that there are no surprises later on. Here are 4 things to consider when choosing your open source LMS.
1. Allows you to create a progressive learning experience
Many LMSs have a modular or linear structure that does not allow you to create a progressive learning experience with your content.
This can be problematic because it forces students to go through the modules in their original order, which may feel unnatural and unengaging for them.
A good e-learning lms open-source will allow you to organize your content as you see fit so that it is easy for students to find what they need and access it immediately. This will ensure that your course is engaging to every student.
Likewise, the learning sector does not stop evolving, so an LMS will also have to continue advancing at the same level. Therefore, having the best technology when training your students will be essential to enhance interest and learning.
Examples
For example, the Graspway open source lms platform has detailed data tracking, all via web, with dashboards, and with the possibility of exporting the information to a spreadsheet.
It is also possible to track micro (student), meso (course) or macro (a part or the whole organization and its associated courses).
2. Provides a platform for interaction between students and instructors and has an excellent user experience for both of them
One of the main differences between an LMS open Source and other e-learning systems is that it allows instructors and students to interact with each other through forums, discussion groups, and virtual laboratories.
An LMS will not only be able to help you create your online course but also facilitate communication among participants. For this reason, it is important that the LMS has features like surveys, quizzes, and chat rooms that allow instructors to engage more with the class.
Additionally, something that is fundamental is that people know how to use them in an easy and intuitive way, it is useless to have the best features if our students do not know how to use the platform easly.
Examples
Many open source lms platforms have the best features on the market, but fail to deliver a good user experience. An example of this is the LMS platform Chamilo which is difficult to navigate because its menu is at the top and the navigation is by clusters, this is confusing for students because they do not see the courses in the correct way.
3. Your LMS open source has to help you make decisions
A good open source LMS has to be able to offer you reports and statistics. This will help you achieve greater learning, reducing the cost of training.
With the information provided by an LMS, you can figure out which courses are most effective and what areas need more attention. To do this, we’ll need to look at student performance data and see where improvements can be made.
Examples
Several open source platforms offer the possibility to provide you with student performance reports. Graspway, for example, offers specific functionalities oriented to better understand the teaching of your students, some of these are:
- Dashboard customized according to role
- Course metrics
- User progress metrics
- Statistics
- CSV reports
3. Ask yourself how well adapted it is to your business needs.
An LMS open source will need to be well adapted to your company’s needs, as well as the training program that you want to create. For example, if your company has a corporate culture of having meetings at 7 am every day and then again in the afternoon, this is not something that should be programmed into an LMS.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a simple e-learning solution for employees who work from home or outside the office and don’t have enough time, it would be necessary to be a platform that offers the possibility of adjusting to the time of each student according to their time and schedule availability and to be very easy to use.
Examples
Some platforms such as Moodle offer a very complete and large number of functionalities and possibilities. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage as it may require a higher investment for its initial configuration and may not adapt adequately to the needs of the project, precisely due to an excess of options.
Many types of companies such as SMEs must-have tools that are easy to use and that the options they choose in their LMS are according to their needs. Many times companies and/or institutions decide to buy an LMS that has features that they do not really need, making the cost-benefit really little.
Moodle is an example of this where there are many e-Learning projects for which Moodle’s many options are superfluous. Therefore, it is advisable to make sure you need these extras and the cost they imply in terms of training for their use, complexity, etc. before choosing this LMS.
On the other hand, Graspway offers the possibility of having functionalities that perfectly fit your needs. In addition, it has an integration with WordPress which will be easy to use and for this reason the cost-benefit of using this open-source LMS will be higher. Some of these may include:
- Optional private cloud deployment
- Custom WordPress + Elementor
- Multi-language (Spanish, English, and French)
