6 Steps for Successfully Creating an Effective LMS Platform

6 Steps for Successfully Creating an Effective LMS Platform

One of the most useful things to have within your company to aid employee development is an LMS. LMS stands for Learning Management System. An LMS allows you to create, manage, and track online learning, encouraging growth and personal or professional development. But if you don’t already have an LMS, how do you create one?

Here are the 6 steps to follow to make sure your LMS is as effective and successful as possible.

Step 1: Planning

Planning is crucial for any project.
When planning your LMS, consider some of the following things:

1. What are the primary objectives of this LMS? What do you want it to achieve?

2. Who is your ideal target audience?

3. What features and functionality do your customers require in an LMS?

4. What features and functionality do you as an LMS administrator require?

5. What is the timeline for the LMS creation? When is the deadline?

Answering the above questions at a minimum will help you to be more efficient and have a clearer understanding of exactly what the next steps are.

Step 2: Configuration

Before you start creating your LMS, you need to understand the technology behind it.
If you don’t have the capabilities to support your chosen platform, it is important that you take steps to correct this or choose a platform that you could support.
Do some research into the required infrastructure needed and make a checklist of the requirements to compare.
Once you know you are capable of running your platform, you can start to build the foundations of your LMS.

Step 3: Content

You need to decide what content you want to include and check that your content is compatible with your platform.
If you create your courses in SCORM 1.2, but your LMS only accepts xAPIs, then you are going to have a problem.
To avoid this, when you are creating your content, refer back to the configuration of your LMS to help you decide what format the content should be in.

Step 4: Testing

Before you launch your LMS, work with the people around you to test the system and check for any problems.
Multiple rounds of testing will allow you to iron out any major bugs, such as a button that doesn’t work or some UI that doesn’t look quite right.
Testing every single feature multiple times will mean you can fix them before your LMS gets to the public, lessening the number of issues that arise upon launch.

Step 5: Communication

Communicate with customers on what they should expect, communicate any issues this might cause and when to expect it. What do your clients need to do before the launch, if anything?
Make sure that you are sending out regular emails and update them at key milestones e.g. a month before, a week before, or the day before.
The more often you update your customers, the smoother the transition will be.

Step 6: Launch

Let your customers know when the new site is live and support them with implementing it.
Deal with any problems that come up as calmly and efficiently as you can.
Once you’ve had the initial launch, it’s time to start thinking about what you can do in the future.
Take on board any feedback your customers give you and make a list of improvements to make the future experience the best it can be.

How can we help?

If you are interested in having a trial of our LMS or exploring the options for your own white-label LMS,

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Phone: 0333 5777 144

Email: info@maguiretraining.co.uk

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