Moving over to Learning Management System (LMS) could be a positive but a major change for an educational institution which needs to be adopted by all of their users. To ensure that the IT investments get into right direction and the institution gets maximum RoI, it is crucial to select the LMS wisely. Below are few factors that one should consider before selecting a LMS for them:
1) Ease of use
This is first and foremost factor. If the LMS is easy to use, your users will love to log in frequently into the system. On the other hand, if the Learning Management System is not user friendly, the users would start maintaining gaps with it. It is important to consider ease of use for all the users of your ecosystem including administrators, teachers, staff members, students, designers and developers etc.
2) Customization Capabilities
Usually, most of the Learning Management System try to encompass all the features that an educational institution may need. But as every school is different, so are their needs. At times you may find that you really don’t need a feature that the LMS is offering and you need some feature that is not already there in the system. This gives rise to the fact that if the LMS is not extensively customizable, it may not fit your needs. If the LMS is customizable, you can tailor it as per your specific needs.
3) Price
Pricing plays an important role while making any technology decisions. It is important to take into consideration the fact that not only the initial price of the LMS justifies its features, but also, the recurring costs are not an overkill. The recurring price includes subscriptions, infrastructure, maintenance etc.
4) Mobile Readiness
World is going mobile. Smartphones have become an important part of our lives. According to a research carried out by Pew Research Center, over 72% of people in US use smartphones. It is thus crucial to consider mobile readiness of the LMS so it can be accessed on the go by your users.
5) Past Updates and Future Roadmap
For any software, it is important to know how it responds to the changing environment. While selecting an LMS, you need to ensure that the system is capable enough to change with future. This can be identified by talking to the developer of LMS along with reviewing their past growth and version updates.
6) Security
Cyber security is a high priority factor in this era. While hunting for an LMS, identification of its security measures is important. The safety of user data need to be considered carefully.
7) Scalability
Constant growth is something that every organization desires for. With this vision, the LMS should be scalable to facilitate increasing number of users without any significant increase in costs to the school.
8) Branding
Branding plays an important role in creating emotional attachment of the users to any system. If the Learning Management System provide custom branding capabilities, you can make your users more attached to the system.
