Why should you consider having a customizable learning management system-LMS?

Browsing your LMS and feeling like it belongs to your brand or your company makes you and your team feel familiar with it. Customizing your learning management system allows you to control the features, like changing them to match the organization’s requirements.

Rebranding the LMS is also an important thing that benefits your company. Easy and quick rebranding saves you time and money as you don’t have to hire people to create your e-learning platform from scratch.

Another vital reason is tracking your learners’ path. The LMS should grant this kind of feature to allow you to collect data about attendees’ metrics and progress rates. The latter helps you detect the effectiveness of the courses and their effect on the attendee and its work performance.

Customizing the learning experience for your team or students is a major purpose. A custom LMS grants you customized course creation features to personalize courses depending on each team or individuals.

How can Smart Courses for Confluence relate to this?

Smart Courses for Confluence is indeed a custom LMS that provides all the mentioned above and other customizable areas in the app, starting from the first layout page, which is the course catalog, to the permissions, and finishing with the courses and metrics.

Catalog:

• Branding

Smart Courses for Confluence gives you the ability to place your brand on the catalog. You can customize the Confluence menu title with the department name, for example, or the courses’ purpose like the team building activities one. You just have to click on the Configuration Icon on the top right, and the screen below will pop up.

As you can see, the catalog title and logo are customizable as well.

You can live preview your changes and see how they look just by clicking save.

• Announcement

From the announcement section, you can add info, a tip, a note, a warning, or a default style that is none of the previously mentioned, just a sentence. Tick the one you’re seeking and write the message. You can choose to show the icon or not as well.

• Card

When navigating to Smart Courses catalog, the first thing you will come across is the course cards. They represent the course and contain general details that will help you choose which course interest you. One of the remarkable things in the card is the thumbnail. It’s customizable in size and scaling. Put what height and width you want, or just keep it responsive to the size of your screen.

You also have the right to choose which information appears on the course card and which does not.

Notice the difference between the two cards.

Another interesting feature about the exam course is that you can customize the start and resume message like the screenshot below.

Added to that, you can select which sort you’d like your courses to be filtered with by default.

Courses:

The course contains sections, and these sections are composed of different capsules. As an administrator, you can enable and disable which capsules you want to be used or not in the course. This is an important step before the course creation, as it helps you facilitate the course creation process by minimizing the number of capsules appearing.

Enable and disable capsules in the sections courses like below.

Check the youtube video demonstration for Smart Courses’ catalog.

Categories:

Add and delete categories that will appear in the filter section depending on the type of courses you work on.

Permissions (only for SERVER):

You can edit Smart Courses permissions by granting creation permissions to a group of people or individual users.

For example, in an organization, the marketing supervisor, the administrator, can give permission to the team leader to create courses and restrict the team members from doing so.

For those who don’t know adaptive learning, it’s “a type of personalized learning made possible by the use of computers. The adaptive learning system delivers assessments that evaluate students’ prior knowledge and then using artificial intelligence prescribes individualized learning content in a sequential manner that is designed to meet the learning needs of each individual.” (J. Ryoo and K. Winkelmann, 2021)

In other words, if we link this to e-learning, it’s about collecting personalized data about the learners, whether you’re an educational organization or a business, and then giving them custom online courses. The personalized data can be their personal learning needs, learning style, expectations, and so on.

There are 3 types of adaptive learning:

• Adaptivity of the content based on the learner’s needs
• Adaptivity of the content’s presentation mode and educational form
• Complete adaptivity (a mix between the two above)

How can we implement adaptive learning in an e-learning tool? 

Different learning styles should be taken into consideration to ensure a reliable implementation. As you know in the pedagogy of teaching, the psychological and cognitive feature of the learner is vital because it has an impact on the learning style.

In this context, Felder and Silverman developed a 4 dimension-learning-styles model and called it the “Felder-Silverman Learning Styles Model (FSLSM)”. It guarantees adaptivity in e-learning tools and provides detailed information about each style to highlight the importance of each individual on aside. Each learner has their preferences and needs.

1. Active/Reflective

Active learners process information best when they are in teams or doing a classroom or team activity. They’re good team players. Reflective learners prefer individual work. They like to take their time to think about the information given.

2. Sensing/Intuitive

This is related to the type of information. Sensory learners are facts people. In other words, they like to go through real-life scenarios and practice real situations. They learn by living the moment as it is or by feeling like this happened in the real world. Intuitive learners are drawn to theories and hypothetical scenarios. Abstract ideas help them process the information better.

3. Visual/Verbal

This dimension is about the sensory channel, in which the learner prefers learning through visual or verbal information. The Felder-Silverman model states that most learners are visual ones. Visual learners engage better with graphs, illustrations, images, presentations, or diagrams, while verbal learners are more drawn to words, more specifically, texts or audio. They can also benefit from team discussions.

4. Sequential/Global

The 4th and the last dimension presents the progress of learning, whether it’s sequential or global. Starting with the sequential learners, they follow small but wise steps that most of the time have to be logical. They don’t do random steps. All information has to be organized systematically. Global learners, on the other hand, are the complete opposite. They tend to understand the entire image of the lesson but don’t know how they did it or what’s the connection between every piece of information. Give them a complex problem, and it will be solved, but they won’t tell you how they did it because they just don’t know how to explain it step by step.

Implementation of Adaptive learning into Smart Courses for Confluence LMS:

If you’re a Confluence user, you surely know Smart Courses or at least heard of it. It’s a learning management system that holds a massive list of features and offers the opportunity to insert many type of content. In the case of adaptive learning, we need personalized courses for learners, either in groups or individuals. In both cases, this is feasible with Smart Courses. All 4 dimensions of the Felder-Silverman learning styles model can be implemented in the courses with the variety of content types available on the app. You can even assign exams to them through the exam mode feature. More details about the app are here.

The use of learning management systems made this easier than ever, but still carefully preparing for your courses is a must. You can’t just throw content to them. Wise planning for the e-training courses should be done by the concerned people in the organization. Generally, managers or leaders are the course creators because they know exactly what their teams need.

This blog hopes to serve 5 critical pre-training questions briefly to help course creators ensure high-impact e-training courses.

You need to ask yourself 5 questions before starting to create the course.

The “WHY?”

Why are you assigning this course to your team? Define the objective behind every course. Why are you having your team go through an e-learning session? It is essential to point out the goal of the training. You have to set a list of goals that your team needs to accomplish by the end of the year.

A big part of the “why” is about your team and their needs. To better understand them, you should look closely at their technical disparities, goals, motives, and the gap between where they are now, and where they should be.

When you fully understand your team, it will be easy to find courses’ ideas because it’s the needed skill that will benefit the organization that matters. Make sure your team comprehends the goal and the gain behind the course so that you achieve the course effectiveness needed. Try always to address courses related to the job to boost productivity within that position.

The “WHAT?”

What are they going to learn? It’s more about the content here. Focus on giving your team relevant information to their job positions. If you’re leading an IT team, you don’t have to teach them about customer relations or how to generate sales with a customer. Remember when we were in school, and we used to get annoyed by subjects that have no relevance to our studies. Like, am I ever going to use this?

It’s crucial to detect the correct content and make it relatable to the team as much as possible, like that you ensure a satisfied and acknowledged team and so a productive one.

The “WHEN?”

When are they taking the course? You have two options here. Either schedule a time for the course, or you can implement just-in-time e-learning like previously mentioned in our blog post. It’s your choice here, depending on your teams’ preferences & availability. You can try both and see which one impacts better on your team.

The “WHERE?”

Where are they attending the e-training course? You may get confused here by thinking we’re talking about the place. Since it’s virtual learning, so it’s home by default. But that’s not the answer to the question. We’re referring to the LMS tool.

We talked before about using an engaging LMS tool as it’s the most important part of e-learning. The tool should be compatible with all content types to make sure you insert visual and audio aids in addition to the text. The aim of the course is to leave a high impact on the learners, and this is unreachable if you’re not using the right LMS tool.

If you’re still deciding which tool to buy, you should probably look at our app Smart Courses for Confluence.

The “HOW?”

How should the content be? It should be impactful and compelling. The content is as important as the LMS tool. It would be best if you created something catchy that will teach the learners and entertain them.

The content should include quiz games, questions, or even fun videos or gifs to make it more engaging. Playing has always been fun for us since we’re little. We teach kids through playing, and this concept is still applicable till now and will always be. But not only kids can be taught through playing, adults as well. “Applying this concept has led to the term gamification that is used to describe an innovative approach using game mechanics in a non-gaming context (Deterding et al. 2011). It is an interdisciplinary approach seeking to motivate users to achieve certain behavioral or psychological outcomes (e.g., learn faster, complete their personal profile, daily use of a specific platform” (Stieglitz et al. 2017)

Researches showed that implementing gamification has a high impact on learners. “Recent psychological studies have shown that enhancing (with game elements) information systems resulted in a significant increase of software adoption in business environments, which in turn had a positive impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of employees.” (Herzig et al. 2012a, b)

We talked about Team Buiding content in a previous blog post, where we gave examples of engaging course activities. You can take those as examples, or you can create your own impactful training courses based on the session’s aim. Do not forget always to align your business goals with your training courses. Teams have to be constantly aware of what they’re working towards and what they should acknowledge by the end.

Briefly:

Try Smart Courses for Confluence

But here we are living in a Newton Cradle: one ball is the COVID leftovers (anxiety, pain, fear), and the other is the desperate craving to get back to the usual joyful life.
This pandemic has forced us to adapt and engage in the massive usage of virtual platforms as a first-aid-plan to maintain continuity in work & education.

Hence the question: do we still need to rely on virtual platforms to teach and learn? Or get back to the traditional classes approach? Or rely on both?

Using a blend of learning approaches means combining different media types that complete each other to get the best outcome. This seems to be the most adequate learning approach as a post-COVID not only for universities and educational institutions but also for companies and business organizations.

In a recent research study done by the International Journal of Data and Network Science ( June 2021), Blended learning was defined as follows:
“Blended learning involves numerous approaches such as formal (teacher-led classrooms) and informal (e.g., role modeling and collegial connections) live face-to-face approaches, formal (live e-learning classes) and informal (e.g., emails and online communities) virtual collaborations, self-paced learning (e.g., online resource links, simulations, web-learning modules, online self-assessment, and workbooks), as well as performance support via knowledge databases, help systems, documentation, and performance support tools.”

So what does it take to implement a successful blended learning approach within your organization?

According to studies, 3 main success factors can influence a blended learning adoption;

• Human variables: competency to learn independently, experience with technological tools, learners preference of blended learning…
• Instructional variables: cost, time, effort, management support, learner support to ensure a high involvement…
• Learning variables: the presence of a clear learning strategy, technological and instructional support, awareness, and attitude toward blended learning …

How to plan, develop, deliver, manage and evaluate a blended learning program?

Referring to one of the milestones of blended learning, Khan’s octagonal blended learning framework, here are the 8 dimensions of this framework that serves to implement a meaningful well-distributed learning environment.

Khan’s blended learning framework

Why can an LMS be part of the blended learning technological facilitator?

LMS tools ( learning management systems) are commonly known for their anytime anywhere learning approach, where learners can attend their courses from any place at their own pace. This can help increase the learner’s acceptance and involvement in the blended learning approach, especially after “ flex-office” imposed by the new post-COVID lifestyle.
Another criterion of LMSs that can be a game-changer is the fact of supporting various content types. In its definition, blended learning is based on the use of different learning approaches and learning media and content types. Taking Smart Courses for Confluence LMS as an example, it supports almost every content type needed to design outstanding online courses, from adding customized questions to adding HTML codes.