What General Features Should I Look For in an LMS?

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to talk about the general features that you are going to want to look for as you select your learning management system. For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which says "Be an opener of doors." And that's what you want to do right now. Look for the features in those learning management systems that are going to allow you to open up those new doors to the students in your class.

By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to identify the general features of learning management systems that impact the selection. First, let's go ahead and take a look at the major general features of learning management systems for teachers. There are quite a few of them. So follow along as we go. First and foremost, a learning management system is going to give the teacher the ability to organize that content into either units, chapters, or lessons. You want to make sure that you are able to take what you are teaching, and really focused it in, using the learning management system. You can present those as playlists to the student. You can organize your content in any way that you wish to teach those units. And Learning management systems should offer a lot of options for switching that up as you continue to edit what it is that you're teaching.

Learning management systems should also include the ability to add a variety of individual content items. You want to make sure that you can put in your own selected texts or readings, charts and graphs and elements that you can add along the way to support your learning, various multimedia pieces or animations, different interactive tools that help tailor the learning to your classroom.

Another feature you want to look for is the ability for you to create individual accounts within a learning management system. Those individual accounts can have a number of different roles or privileges that you can assign to different people. So for example, students might be able to access one thing, whereas teachers can get access to other elements. Parents and administrators can have their own individualized access. This allows everyone to come together without putting all of the information out there on the table. People should only be able to see really what it is that they need to know.

There's also a benefit in most learning management systems, and you want to make sure that you look for the ability to post announcements and grades. This has to do with the communication. You want to make sure that you can post announcement to small groups versus entire classes versus students across multiple classes. You're going to want to see that you can incorporate that online grade book that allows you to track student progress that they can also see. A lot of different learning management systems also have email function that can interface with external school email systems, so that you're really able to take that information that you need to get and send it right through the existing learning management system. You want to make sure that you are able to take the existing information that you want to communicate and send it right through that learning management system.

You'll want to make sure that you look for a learning management system that allows you to conduct class discussions, tests, and group projects. This really focuses in on how you can engage the student in multiple ways and really advance that collaborative element of digital learning. So allowing students to conduct those class discussions through various boards or forums, creating online quizzes or exams that students can take and will be graded through that learning management system, and really focusing in on kids collaborating.

Also, you're going to want to look and see that the LMS has a feature, such as a Dropbox that students can use for submission. You want to make sure that students are able to submit those assignments by a certain deadline, but also allow them to be able to submit this stuff when they are outside of the classroom. This gets rid of those awkward conversations about students who are sick or missing that day. They can still be expected to turn in their material.

LMS should also have features that allow you to develop personalized learning paths. As we know, the greatest asset of having digital elements in the classroom is that we can individually assign students various tasks to help meet them where they are. And you don't want to make sure that the LMS works for you in helping to group students or grade students based on their progress towards various mastery of state standards and learning objectives, rather than having to view the entire class as one big conglomerate.

Finally, you want to look that an LMS has features for collaborative document creation, presentation, and various video tools. This isn't so much students talking together, but actually working to produce something as a group, working easily through the system that is already created. Teachers can also help to promote the use of those video tools in a way to demonstrate what it is that they want the student to do, but also a way for students to demonstrate what it is that they're learning.

There are other important features that you want to look at, aside from the basic features just for a teacher's use. You want to make sure that there is good interface operability, meaning that the system that you choose is compatible with all types of web browsers, so that you are not kicking out certain devices that your school or district has already purchased to make that system work. You want to make sure that it is device accessible, meaning that multiple devices can access the information-- things like smartphones and tablets. Are there apps that are available so that you can get at this information at all the times when you would need it?

And finally, is there integration in your system for SMS or texting? This is a wonderful new thing that we're seeing in schools, where teachers are able to reach out to students of text, something that they are already checking constantly, to help remind them of deadlines and other elements. You're going to want to see that the reporting factors are there and working for your needs. Is there the ability to build custom reports for assessment reporting purposes? Are you able to look at the data that your students are putting in in different ways? Can you then view those reports easily, or you or does it take a lot to put them all together? You want a learning management system that doesn't also require you to create Excel documents, but can help do that for you, within the system.

And finally, can you then use the LMS for creating various student plan documents? Are you able to look 504s and IEPs and RTIs? All of those things that you need to know about a student-- can it be collected together under one learning management system, so that when you go into individualize the learning, you're not just looking at what they've shown you in your class, but you're also looking at state created documents for that individual student to help incorporate?

You are also going to want to make sure that you give close consideration to the FERPA rules and any other district tools that you have. You need to make sure that the learning management system helps to support what you are already using and keeps you in line with the various rules that you need to comply with as a teacher, a school, and a district.

Now that you've reached the end of the lesson, you should be able to identify the general features of learning management systems that help impact selection. Now, I would like to take just a moment for reflection. Now that you've learned all about the features that you should look for when selecting a learning management system, what do you think would be the first step you would take as you begin that selection process? Feel free to pause the video as you think about your answer to that question.

Now, it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video. The additional resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description, so that you can easily target the resources that you want.