LMS for the Era of Adaptation and Flexibility

The Covid-19 pandemic is a major medical, social, political, economic, and educational crisis the world has seen in years. Eight months on, the number of new infections continues to increase without any sign of decline, and there is no data to predict when this life-threatening pandemic will end. Many countries around the world have applied social distancing measures to guard against and curb the spread of this disease.

Social Distancing, Quarantine, Lockdown – whatever your side of the world has embraced, has led to multiple challenges in business operations, including employee capability development interventions. The question is, how can organizations, Learning and Development (L&D) departments in particular, adapt and live with it?

LMS - A quick, effective, and optimal adaptation solution

Facing the global pandemics and large-scale lockdowns, thousands of enterprises and institutions around the world have transformed their knowledge delivery methods from offline to online mode using the Learning Management Systems (LMS) - perhaps the most effective change given the current situation.

While training and teaching through online LMS was available before the outbreak of COVID-19, only a few organizations used it owing to their traditional teaching methodologies or legacy processes. Only after this dreaded epidemic had spread like wildfire, requiring large-scale social adjustments, did more people adopt it as a part of their organizational employee training and development plan.

How an LMS aids adaptation and flexibility

In essence, most LMSes support managing, operating, guiding, monitoring, reporting, and evaluating learners out-of-the-box for a majority of courses and training programs. They also help instructors create rich, high-quality, and easy-to-manage online learning or training environments. To provide enough flexibility for delivering knowledge amidst stay-at-home policies and lockdowns, modern LMSes can:

• Support and ensure compatibility with multiple devices, operating systems and browsers, ensuring seamless and access. A learning platform’s mobile compatibility, through its Responsive Interface and Mobile Apps, further aids learner adoption.
• Scale up for a large number of simultaneous user access. Meeting and classes can take place with many members and users.
• Provide various training modalities including eLearning, Virtual Classroom/ Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT), Blended Learning. Each business or school can have more options to deliver training to their learners accommodating to its unique needs. Engage learners with engagement and adoption features like Gamification, Social Learning and Knowledge Collaboration.
• Meet the requirements of social isolation policies, most importantly. Training and teaching can happen anytime and anywhere, while students can study at their own pace and comfort level.

Currently, many vendors in various countries are offering different LMSes. While choosing a suitable system is still based on particular requirements, goals, and existing infrastructures of each business or institution that makes the call, LMS is the solution for online teaching and training in the context of today's world.