BUILD YOUR OWN LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

THE PROS AND CONS

How much does it cost to build a Learning Management System?

There are several development and maintenance costs associated with building your own Learning Management System (LMS). The initial cost of creating your own LMS is typically higher than paying the associated license fees to use an off the shelf solution; however, by opting to go with a custom platform you are also investing in a long-term product for your organization that is optimized to meet your specific business needs.

Here’s where we’re going if you want to jump ahead:

1. Analyzing the Pros & Cons of Creating Your Learning Management System

2. Key Modules of Learning Management Systems

3. Common Pitfalls of Learning Management Systems

4. Differentiating Factors in an Over-Crowded Market

A Learning Management System (LMS) allows organizations to deploy and track online training programs. LMS delivers e-learning programs based on various pedagogy practices like formal, social, adaptive, micro-learning and others.

Learning Management Systems contribute significantly to the e-learning training initiatives for both educational institutes as well as cooperations.

There is a vast array of-off-the-shelf LMS software available, though it is tough and time-consuming to determine or identify the right solution which will fulfill current training or educational need of the organization.

Pros & Cons of Creating Your Learning Management System

Pros

• Save on License Fee – Off-the-shelf Learning Management Systems usually have user limits, course limits, storage limits and these factors define the license fee. So, with the growth of the organization the running cost increases. With your own Learning Management System, you save on ever-increasing license fees and other limits.

• Custom Features – Even if you manage to find a good, reasonably priced off-the-shelf LMS, you can still find yourself restricted by the feature limitations. For example, learners are not allowed to take a retest or your training requires configurable re-assessment after a particular period. The vendors may not entertain any custom request or even though they do this may take a significant amount of time to be launched or accessible.

• Offer as SAAS – You can offer and sell your LMS as a product to other educational institutes.

Cons

• Development Costs – There are several development and maintenance costs associated with building your own Learning Management System. The initial cost of creating your own LMS is typically higher than paying the license fees to use an off-the-shelf solution; however, by opting to go with a custom platform you are also investing in a long-term product for your company/institute that is optimized to meet your specific business needs.

• The Integration Cost – Some off-the-shelf Learning Management Systems have built-in integration for some external systems. Owning your LMS will incur the extra cost of development per integration.

The key modules of the Learning Management System

• User & Role Management – The module is responsible for user authentication and the ability to manage (Add, Edit, Delete) the users and their roles. The roles define the permission and access level. The standard LMS has pre-configured roles like educator, learner, administrator and the module provides the ability to create additional roles.

• Course Management – The ability to manage courses and categories is the responsibility of this module.

• Activity Management – The core of any LMS is to describe and manage learning activities. Some examples of learning activities are video contents, SCORM packages, wiki, articles/lessons/concepts, assessments, documents (PPT, PDF, DOC, etc.), surveys, etc. A typical course constitutes one or more activities.

• Learning Path – Learning path is the course delivery engine of a Learning Management System. It is a collection of courses to master a program or a subject. The module also helps educators or admins save time as a path is defined to achieve a learning goal.

• Content Repository – The repository is a central place to manage the learning objects. The learning objects must not be made local to the courses for reusability and to avoid duplication of the content. This module provides a central place to manage learning objects or content.

• Transcripts / Grades / Certificate Management – The outcome or results can be managed through this module. The results of the quiz or assessments or learner participation in the activities are documented and presented in the form of Grade Books, Transcripts, and certificate allocation.

Common Pitfalls of Learning Management Systems

• The support beyond on-demand training is limited - Most of the learning management systems were developed and designed for self-paced & on-demand training and lacks the capabilities to adopt other pedagogy practices like adaptive learning, social learning, personalize learning, etc.

• Integrations with other key systems – In the modern era of automation, integrations play a pioneering role in mitigating the manual work neededfor onboarding the users or exchanging key data sets. Whether the LMS has to be utilized for training of the employees, continuing education or in an educational institute (K-12/Higher Ed), the integration is required either with HRIS (Human Resource Information System) or SIS (Student Information System). Most of the LMSes lacks seamless integrations.

• Proprietory content authoring environment limited export feature – Some of the LMSes have their proprietory content authoring environment, though content authored are not SCORM conformant.

Differentiating Factors in an Over-Crowded Market

• APIs For The Outside World – Building easy and simple use of API for external systems to integrate.

• Utilization of AI (Artificial Intelligence) for personalize learning – Determining the behavior of the learner and delivering the learning object based on it for personalized and effective learning.

• Conformant with e-Learning Standards – Adopting standards (LTI, xAPI, SCORM, AICC, etc.) for better interoperability, plug and play of the learning objects and better tracking of the learner’s progress.

• Gamified Learning environment – Studies have depicted that Learners recall just 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. If there are visuals accompanying an oral presentation, the number rises to 30%, and if they observe someone carrying out an action while explaining it, 50%. But learners remember 90% if they do the job themselves, even if only as a simulation or interactive environment. Gamification of the platform and the content leads to a better outcome.