What makes a good Learning Management System?

Creating a custom system can be a challenging task, and without proper planning, a simple project can turn into a major headache. Having helped several schools design and build custom systems, here are the four things I recommend keeping in mind when designing or adopting a Learning Management System (LMS).

4 Design Tips for Better Online Learning with a Learning Management System (LMS)

Focus on data, for both instructors and students.

We're obsessed with data these days, and with good reason: it's relatively easy to obtain if you know what you're looking for. While you won't be able to identify everything that's useful beforehand, take a step back and evaluate what you hope to learn. Make a list of the information you need and a list of the things you would like to have. For example, do you need to know the average of students' grades in History? How about attendance rates during the month of December?

Knowing what you're looking for beforehand helps you determine what specific information you'll need to get from your users.

Design for usability: make it “pleasurable” to use

Once you know what you need users to tell you, you need to make it easy for them to do it. Design each component of your LMS with usability in mind. Create a hierarchy of actions you need users to take, ranking them from essential to non-essential, and use prominent buttons, obvious links, and clear text to direct people to them.

Also, take advantage of what is available. Things like social logins, streaming videos, shared calendars, message boards, and forms are common on the web, and users immediately know what to do with them. Get inspired by Google, Facebook, Microsoft Word, and others to learn common web interface topics and copy them. Your users will thank you.

For an excellent reference on designing user-friendly interfaces, I recommend Stephen Krug's book “Don't Make Me Think.”

Plan for mobile from the beginning

As of 2020, there are more than 14 billion mobile devices in use worldwide, a figure that is expected to rise to nearly 17 billion by 2023.

Additionally, more than half of web traffic is mobile, meaning students, parents, teachers, and staff will most likely need to use the LMS on a mobile device. To optimize your experience, it takes a mobile-centric design approach. Instead of building a full, standard website and then cutting features or reducing functionality for a mobile version, start by focusing solely on how your LMS looks and works on mobile devices.

Ask yourself: what are the main tasks that teachers, students, parents and administrators need to complete? What information and tasks must be accessible at all times? How do you see information on small screens? How do you interact with the information?

It's always easier to add complexity to a desktop experience, but designing with mobile in mind ensures a seamless experience for users, wherever they are.

Design curriculum and instruction taking into account the strengths of your specific LMS

Every platform is different and there is no single perfect approach to creating an LMS. Some work well as evaluation software, while others handle videos better. Some are visual, while others are fast-loading, text-based, and use frequent loading of lessons and pages to guide the student through the material.

Whatever your approach, design what and how students learn in cooperation with the strengths and abilities of the LMS rather than designing digital lessons and units and then adapting them to what the LMS can do.

While the customization options can be exciting, taking the time to consider these four things will help you build the system that meets your needs so you can focus on what's most important: providing a great education to students.