Ready, Set ...

You are finally ready for a new e-Learning Management System. Of course you'll want an affordable Learning Management System with the features you need.  But before you start evaluating different LMS, you'll first want to evaluate how training is organized, delivered and managed in your organization. Use these 4 questions to find the best learning management system:

 

1. Who is responsible for managing the Learners, content and reports within the system?
2. Do you have department level training administrators who handle these responsibilities for their employees?
3. Are managers within the organization engaged in the training their employees take?  Do you want them to get status reports, or take a greater role in managing the learning?
4. If you train external clients, customers, or sales channel partners, how will you organize their learners in your LMS?  Do you want them to get status reports?

Knowing what you need will help you select a solution to meet those needs.  Working with Enterprise LMS customers, Accord recognizes the value of an LMS that can align to your organizational learning structure and needs, not the other way around.  Answering the above questions will help you identify exactly how you’ll need to group and segregate your users and delegate the administration of those users and their content.  This article examines two key features that help the Accord LMS align to your organizational structure.
 

Teams

In our online learning platform, a Team is used to define a distinct group of Learners and what they can access in terms of Courses and Learning Roles. Teams can also have LMS Admin assignments.  Here are a few ways that Teams can support your unique e-learning environment:

• Learners - Teams are good for grouping Learners along organizational charts, or geographic locations.
• Courses Access – Select which parts of the Course catalog the Team can access.  Courses can be common to other Teams, or private or a mix of both. 
• Learning Role Access – Learning Roles provide another way to segregate Learners – along job types and training paths. Learning Roles can be limited to specific teams.
• LMS Admin Types - Determine Team administration privileges and permissions.  These custom LMS Admin types can vary as needed from Team to Team.
• Team Membership Rules - Automatically assign Learners to Teams based on their user profile information.
• Team Access Codes - Assign Learners to Teams, assign Learning Roles, and grant or revoke LMS Admin permissions.
• Social Learning Groups - Offer private Team discussion areas within the LMS.

• Internal Training - Organizations can use Teams to mirror their organizational structure so that managers can assign Courses and run reports only on their own employees. Parent Teams can assign Courses and run reports on all of their child Teams.
• External Training - Organizations that provide or sell training to client companies can set up each client with their own Team to isolate their Learners, define specific Course access and assign their own LMS Admin for Learner management and reports. 

 

LMS Admin Types

 Each Team can has as many different LMS Admin Types as needed for instructors, managers, course catalog administrators, report recipients, etc. LMS Admin Types are defined by the LMS Features they can access and can also further narrow the Course and Learning Role access held by the Team.  The Accord LMS does not limit the available number or type of administrators available in the e-learning system.  The following items highlight some of the customization available for Accord LMS Admin types:

• Feature Access – The Accord LMS provides very granular control over all administrative features.  This includes view, edit or delete permissions over courses and content, Learner management, reports, Teams and even other LMS Admin Types. 
• Course Access – Select which parts of the Team’s Course catalog the LMS Admin can access.
• Learning Role Access – Different LMS Admin Types can manage different groups of Learners depending on which Learning Roles they can access.

Narrowing the LMS Admin Course and Learning Role access from what the entire Team can access is useful when different managers oversee different types of training within the same office. For example, let’s say there is a Team for the Seattle office and you would like one LMS Admin to have access to all the Courses and Learners assigned to the Sales associated roles, and another LMS Admin to have access to all the Courses and Learners with IT associated roles. 
 

Get the Big Picture Before You Buy

Understanding how you will segregate and manage users (Teams) and what administrative flexibility you need (Admin Types) is a good start to identifying specific functionality that your enterprise or employee Learning Management System will need to offer. For more information on best practices for finding the best LMS platform, please download our white papers:

Buying an LMS:  Getting the Most Bang for your Budget

Extended Enterprise LMS:  Extend Your Training to External Learners.