Your Top 5 LMSes for Each Industry

Alina Majeed
Nov 5 · 9 min read
The top 5 Learning Management Systems that outperform across each industry.
The top 5 Learning Management Systems that outperform across each industry.
Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Learning Management Systems (LMSes) have seen a hockey-stick growth this past decade as providers continue to fine-tune their products to solve more and more of their clients’ problems. As a result, LMSes are no longer the property of the education industry and they’re now being leveraged in the world of corporate training, employee onboarding, enterprise development and so much more.

With so many great LMS solutions out there, you can’t help but get overwhelmed during your quest to finding your perfect fit. Although most high-caliber systems tend to offer a one-stop-shop solution to tackle almost everything that revolves around e-learning technology, there are leaders in every industry that excel at serving their specific verticals.

Here are the 5 leading LMS solutions that dominate their industry verticals by providing just the right feature-set to get the job done:


Higher Education

Before jumping into the list, it’s important to talk about what you should be looking for. A thorough feature checklist of requirements will be your best guide to finding a solution that fits your needs like a glove.

Here are some must-have LMS features for universities:
a) The ability to create educational workflows that facilitate learning models like ‘blended learning’
b) Being able to collaborate — across administrators, instructors, and students
c) Creating, grading and managing tests/assessments
d) Having access to rich reports that track learner analytics and performance
e) Integrations with classroom tools and university’s key software stack
f) Mobile accessibility for teachers and students while they’re on the go

Here are some more features that although are not critical to the LMS’s success but are nice to have:
a) Instructional design support to help you create educational content
b) Goal setting for tracking individual learner performance
c) Live video conferencing
d) Gamification of assessments and quizzes

Here are the superstars that help you with these tasks:

1. Edly

Edly is a fairly new contender in the e-learning technology landscape. Yet, among its diverse feature-set, you’ll find built-in course authoring tools, a plethora of integrations and seamless mobile functionality all of which are geared towards delivering a seamless learning experience for students.

Another reason why universities like Harvard, MIT, and the University of Sandiego use their platform is their round-the-clock customer support and award-winning team of instructional designers. They’ve also kept scalability at their platform’s core which allows universities to grow their online student-base, without breaking the bank.

2. Canvas

Canvas has gained a lot of traction with universities recently, owing to its intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Another great thing is that they let you try the LMS for free. This makes it easier for university administrators and faculty to assess the scope of the platform and to gauge whether it not it meets their needs. And of course, after being familiarized with the platform during the free trial, it’s very easy to transition into the full paid version for everyone.

3. Blackboard

Blackboard has led the higher education LMS industry for years now. They offer both a SaaS and a non-SaaS e-learning solution, a great mobile platform and the biggest variety of integrations that amplify its functionality. They also offer a plug-in that allows teachers to broadcast their lessons online through video conferencing for the attendance of remote students.

The only drawback with Blackboard is its lack of agility and responsiveness to customer requirements but aside from that, their solution is very comprehensive.

4. Moodle

Perhaps the most global community-based and free open-source LMS out there, Moodle is a favorite amongst numerous top higher education institutions. If you can get past its slightly dated user interface, you’ll be delighted by its solid functionality. With over 1300 plugins to bolster the utility of the software and a global network for knowledge and resource sharing, Moodle offers almost everything that is required from a university LMS.

5. Brightspace

Brightspace has been in the EdTech industry for over 25 years and they’ve earned the trust of educators worldwide with their expertise and knowledge. Although it takes slightly longer for users to learn the ropes with Brightspace as compared to its contemporaries, it’s just as functional.

A star feature of theirs called ‘Release Conditions’ lets teachers limit what students can see based on predefined conditions. This is particularly useful for teachers who want students to access the next lesson only after they have submitted the deliverables for the previous one.


K-12 Schools

Photo by Nicole Honeywill / Sincerely Media on Unsplash

You might think that when it comes to an LMS, the requirements of K-12 schools will be very similar to those of universities. Although that’s right for the most part, there are subtle yet significant differences. Since learners are supposed to visit school premises more strictly and regularly, features like live video conferencing and mobile accessibility tend to take a back seat on the priority list and at the same time, the following rise to the top:

a) Device-agnosticism: The LMS needs to be functional on all devices to ensure a unified and equal learning experience for the entire student-base.
b) A user-friendly interface and experience are critical to increasing adoption rates among young learners.
c) Integrations with teacher-preferred technology are necessary to boost adoption among the teachers and extend ROI on existing technological investments.
d) Tools for providing individualized learning pathways to students and subsequent feedback is necessary to maximize course engagement across young students.
e) The LMS should offer tools for sophisticated community and knowledge-base building to streamline the sharing of intellectual property within schools.

1. Haiku Learning

Haiku is a cloud-based platform that takes all the hassle out of managing assignments, grades and feedbacks online. It also employes Google ed apps to keep educators up to speed on the latest developments in the K-12 EdTech space in terms of assessment standards, learning models, best practices and lots more. Another great aspect is their ‘free solo account feature’ that teachers can use independently to teach up to 5 classes with 2GB storage capacity.

2. Schoology

Soon to be acquired by Power School, Schoology has successfully served district schools and public schools in the United States over the past decade with its intuitive learning platform. Schoology has rapidly evolved over the years to quickly incorporate features that satisfy their clients’ developing needs.

One of the biggest appeals of their platform is that it is free for teachers, parents, and schools where only a license fee is charged for schools that link their data into the platform from other programs.

3. Blackboard

Blackboard has launched its K-12 LMS under three categories called Common Core, Innovative Learning and Open Classroom. Each of these options is developed around leveraging mobile devices in classroom education in a way that mobile communication can be used to keep parents involved in their children’s learning experiences and performance.

Although the products aim to provide nimble information sharing and tracking to teachers and parents, these capabilities are not at the forefront of Blackboard’s K-12 products currently.

4. Desire2Learn

Rich learner analytics tracking and reporting is one of the platform’s strongest suits. This, along with its collaborative system for frequent teacher-parent communication has made Desire2Learn very popular among schools with over 650 institutions having adopted it across the globe. The platform offers multiple products at different price points to serve specific needs for different functions.

5. Pearson

The famous textbook publishers have also launched their trio of LMSes, each serving a different need for schools and educators. SuccessNet offers a simplistic tool that assists teachers with documentation and assessment tracking. Pearson also offers SuccessNet Plus which takes on the role of a more traditional LMS and allows teachers to plan, manage and monitor online learning. Their last product called Online Exchange eases collaboration and sharing of resources across multiple levels.


Corporations

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Corporate Learning Management Systems are used by organizations for onboarding new employees, upskilling existing ones and providing hybrid training events for their global workforce.

These platforms come very handy in tracking individual employee performance and developing their training around their experience and expected outcomes. This data-driven personalization and centralization help organizations develop thorough knowledge-bases and standardize their learning and development process.

Here are the features that you should look for when choosing a corporate LMS:
a) The LMS should offer a compliance framework that can be used to develop training courses that don’t oppose standards and regulations.
b) There should be room for e-commerce integrations with popular gateways for paid certifications and premium training content.
c) The platform providers should offer instructional design support to help you build online courseware and content that is customized to your requirements.
d) Sophisticated feedback tools are critical to a corporate LMS to improve the measurability of the employee learning outcomes.
e) Multi-lingual support can become a necessity if you have a global workforce.
f) Being able to create, manage and track online assessments and certifications is key.
g) Executive reports on real-time and post-event data for close tracking of course and learner performance
h) A highly secure platform that provides water-tight security over data

1. TalentLMS

TalentLMS has rightfully earned its spot as one of the leaders in the corporate LMS provider space. Among other things, it offers robust course management which allows users to create courses from scratch, develop assessments and monitor learner progress.

It also offers sophisticated tools that allow clients to develop engaging communities and discussion forums where trainers and learners can interact meaningfully. You can also leverage their course marketplace to buy existing courses and deploy them on your platform if you don’t have the time to create your own course.

2. Docebo

Docebo’s platform encourages you to build engaging courses through its modular interface. Meaning, it’s highly scalable and lets you dial things up (or down) depending on your requirements and business needs. It also makes their platform highly extendable as it can be configured to integrate with third-party tools helping you reap better ROI from all your technological investments.

They also offer AI-powered learning management which allows for higher levels of customization and elimination of user tedium through the automation of all mundane tasks.

3. LearnUpon

LearnUpon goes beyond course creation and management and offers high-end gamification and social learning options to supercharge the e-learning experience. Trainers can create intuitive assessments that test learners on personalized learning pathways to boost learning on areas of weakness.

They can also leverage social learning to develop online communities where both trainers and learners can engage on various topics to further deeper understanding in the more familiar and comfortable space of their social media platforms.

4. Edly

Among the selling points of Edly’s corporate LMS is the fact that it champions an ‘extended enterprise approach’ to e-learning. This makes their platform available for employee onboarding, workforce upskilling and customer, partner training and compliance training. Their multilingual functionality of over 30 languages also comes exceptionally in handy for global e-learning initiatives.

What’s more is that their intuitive admin panel lets you set permissions, define access levels, gain quick insight through dashboards and manage all administrative functions from one place.

5. iSpring Learn LMS

One of the things that make iSpring Learn LMS great for corporate e-learning is its course management automation feature. It lets your training efforts run on autopilot by automating tasks like setting deadlines for activities, assigning assessments at the end of a course and generating real-time reports so you don’t have to get bogged down by the administrative tasks.

Their built-in course authoring tools further simplifies the course creation process through powerful tools that let you set up customized quizzes, assessments, and scenario-based assignments.


Bottom Line

There’s no denying that a competent LMS can play a pivotal role in streamlining learning and development in any organization. At the same time, investing in one requires a lot of commitment (financial and otherwise) and numerous approvals from stakeholders and decision-makers.

As you can probably tell, each industry has its set of top players, and for good reason. By doing your research and finding out exactly what your goals are and what you expect from your LMS, you’ll be one step closer to knowing what your must-haves are and what features you can do without. That way, you’ll pick the solution that makes you pay only for the essentials and save on the bells and whistles, which is what we all really want.

Alina Majeed

Written by

Tech, Marketing and Spider-man super-fan who loves to learn and chronicle her way through it.

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