Since 2019, we’ve faced a rapid increase in the number of users who prefer digital learning over offline classes. The e-learning market amounted to $300 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow 14% in CAGR by 2032. So, if you ever considered venturing into this profitable industry, now is a good time.
The most frequently asked questions are why to start and how to create an LMS platform in the shortest period of time and with a large selection of interesting features. Particularly in this guide, we’ll reveal the types of educational systems, their basic and advanced functionality, and list all the algorithm steps of building them.
What you need to know before creating an LMS
The first thing to learn when you create your own learning management system website is what LMS actually is. It’s a special digital environment where tutors can compose, edit, and upload training courses for the audience. Such platforms establish a thorough educational flow with various types of user grades, adaptive approaches, and assessment systems. They also provide a set of tools that makes content creation simple for teachers and understandable for learners. Users can add audio and video files here, compose scenarios and presentations, generate quizzes, and evaluate success rates. LMSs establish smooth e-learning for businesses of all sizes and types, including medicine, construction, engineering, and machinery, benefiting both tutors and students.
Educational systems consist of two parts: CMS, which, in most cases, represents an administration module, and a user’s cabinet. The first one is responsible for all the interactions between educators and the platform, including editing the existing lessons or writing new ones, monitoring the students' progress, contacting them, etc. In turn, those who access the platform as a student can explore course content, pass tests, and leave feedback for teachers.
Why is LMS important?
If you plan to start an LMS for your own company or establish a stable e-learning business, familiarize yourself with educational systems' main benefits. First, it helps to organize a smooth teaching process, storing all the vital content in a single location, which makes it easy to find. Next, all the platform users can access the files at any time and place they want. It makes the training affordable and convenient. Learners don’t have to wait for the next planned lesson and can manage their time more efficiently.
LMS tracks customers’ progress. So the employer can check if all the workers meet their milestones if, for example, it's a system for a corporate environment. Online platforms help to spot the areas of knowledge that need improvement. Based on users’ comments and performances, course creators can add supplemental material to fill the gaps and impact personal achievements.
Another LMS advantage lies in interactive elements like quizzes, which stimulate the assimilation, retention, and level of engagement. Trainees pass the courses faster and reach better outcomes.
Main reasons to launch an LMS platform
Having an idea of building an LMS from scratch, you should clearly define which corporate goals it can solve. Understanding your purposes will help you determine the software requirements, necessary features, and tech stack you need to be involved in the implementation. Let’s consider the main directions where e-learning LMS will support your business:
- Courses for staff. Regularly upgrading employees’ skills and qualifications is a must-have in the face of rapidly changing market demands and technological innovations. LMS for corporate workers allows to increase productivity, reduce time required for assimilation of new knowledge, and achieve better outcomes. Digital learning promotes workers’ involvement and improves their engagement level during the educational process.
- Partner training. Working with affiliates, you entrust them to represent your product or service to the end consumer. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure they have all the required knowledge, resources, and skills to do it effectively. Reliable LMS software is vital to a successful marketing strategy and effective sales
- Client education. As the research states, there is a 68% higher chance that trained customers will collaborate with your brand than those who have no idea about its values and benefits. Clients are more likely to adopt and engage with the product if they are equipped with open-source courses and receive continuous support. LMS teaches end-users about features specific to their interest and keeps the retention level by providing regular content updates.
- Employee assessment and certification. Create a custom LMS to monitor, track, and report on the progress and the process of knowledge assimilation for each worker. Thus, you’ll evaluate their skills or job suitability and detect bottlenecks that may require additional attention. It will help automatically draw the next stage in the training path and certifications, excluding messy spreadsheets and manual testing.
- Effective HR tool. You can make LMS an employee-centric program that automates hundreds of daily tasks performed by humans, converts paper documentation into digital one, and provides simple access to stored data from any device at the exact time when it’s needed.
Why is it Profitable to Start an LMS Business in 2023?
Types of LMS and their characteristics
Now that you understand where LMS professional development can benefit your business, it’s time to think of how your custom solution should look. Depending on your company's objectives, you may choose one of the suitable LMS types. They all vary by functionality and focus on satisfying unique customers’ needs.
Learning sites
Such services work similarly to e-commerce online stores. Just like merchants upload their products for sale and write descriptions, course creators can add their educational materials covering a wide variety of topics and purposes. Learners will get access to the training after paying a fixed price through the integrated payment processor. You may examine the most popular examples, like Coursera, Udemy, and edX, to get a better understanding of how this type of LMS is organized.
Learning Management Systems Examples
Learning Management Ecosystems
As its name suggests, such LMS provides wider opportunities for creators and learners but requires more time, costs, and effort for development. Educational ecosystems may have an open-source type and offer such functionality as user verification, reporting, or even e-commerce online shops. Get familiar with the principles of LMS work in NeXus.
Traditional LMS
These platforms have a standard set of features allowing tutors to create and update courses, add personal customers’ accounts, and store their progress. They are perfect for a broad audience and internal usage (for example, for universities and schools). Abara and LearnPress are traditional LMS templates used worldwide.
Open-source LMS
High learning management system costs are the main reason why some businesses can’t afford to create custom educational platforms for specific purposes. Still, there are free-to-use resources with standard features, like Moodle and Sakai, where teachers can compile training lessons and edit them later.
Modern LMS
If you want to create an LMS from scratch and target a narrower public, you should focus on this type of software. With gamification tools, custom notifications, and microlearning approaches, you’ll have higher chances to cover customers' specific needs.
Tailor-Made Platforms
Depending on your end-user demands, you may represent a unique solution that absorbs the best LMS features and has a customized UI/UX. Research the market, choose the most valuable options, and combine them in your own educational platform. Usually, systems that offer qualitative customer interactions and a high level of engagement are more profitable but also require larger investments.
Looking for a perfect example of a tailor-made LMS, explore the functionality of the HBX platform…
