Do your teachers spend more time on grading and creating assignments than actually teaching?
Are parents having a difficult time keeping up with their child’s grades?
Are you constantly having to update different software to keep track of your students?
And when it comes to your learning management system (LMS), how do you know what features are important versus just a puffed up marketing tactic?
When purchasing an LMS for your school district you have to look past just a price and a feature list. You’ll need something that will integrate well with the rest of your systems, serve the needs of its end users and grow with your school’s needs.
Below are a few things to look for in your LMS.
1. Compatibility With Your Existing Systems
Before choosing an LMS, find out which educational software your school is already using.
Maybe your school uses a student information system (SIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), standalone apps for attendance and scheduling, and various programs for parent communication. Ideally, you want your LMS to interface with your school’s existing software platforms
Instead of having one more database to maintain, your LMS should be able to communicate with your attendance, student records, and other educational programs
For example, if students change classes or transfer into or out of a school, appropriate fields in your integrated software should be updated with the least amount of administrative work.
Schools that already use SAP or another enterprise-level program may want to consult with SAP LMS consultants about implementation and integration specifics.
Ask about the bundled integrations, APIs, and any additional costs for connecting your LMS with your existing software platforms. Your school can save significant amounts of time and effort by opting for an LMS that easily plugs into your school’s existing technology infrastructure.
2. Features That Address Your School’s Needs
A long feature list sounds great in theory, but how many of these features will your school’s staff and students actually use? Think about the day to day problems your school is facing instead of paying for a product with a bunch of fancy features that aren’t that useful to you.
On one hand, your teachers want something simple to assign and grade homework, make tests, and keep track of grades. On the other, your administration wants something comprehensive to track attendance, enrollment, schedules, and parent communications. You may have multiple campuses and need something that has good reporting features to tie it all together.
Make sure you’re not confusing an LMS with an ERP system. The two are related but an ERP covers much more than just teaching and learning. Compare the best ERP systems for schools and see what features are available to help your campus or campuses run smoothly.
While looking at the best ERP options for K-12 schools, make sure you’ve taken into account as to how it’ll work with your favorite LMS. You may need both an ERP and an LMS, but they shouldn’t have overlapping features. It’s important that the two programs work together instead of fighting against each other.
3. Ease of Use for Teachers, Students, and Parents
Even the most elaborate LMS will be a disappointment if people don’t know how to navigate it on their own. Your teachers have lesson planning, grading, class management, and much more to worry about. It shouldn’t take another chunk of their time to learn how to use a complicated interface.
Say your favorite teacher has 5 periods to teach. She needs to post and grade assignments, give feedback, and ensure everyone is understanding the material in between classes. If every action takes 2 confusing steps, it’s going to waste her time more than it benefits her
Students need to be able to find their lessons and assignments with ease. They need to know when things are due and when they’ve turned them in. Parents will need to check their child’s progress, especially if they have multiple kids at the school.
Before committing to a subscription, ask for a test trial and have teachers and students do common tasks and see what they struggle with
An actual demo with people who will be using it will shed light on more issues that a salesperson might not lead you to believe are problems.
4. Student Data Security and Privacy
Your LMS will store sensitive and valuable information ranging from grades to personal data and private messages of students. A security breach may lead to the exposure of students’ personal information and cause serious harm to your school.
Therefore, it is important to ensure that the LMS you are considering includes sufficient security features such as data encryption, authentication, permissions and roles, and regular backups. In our opinion, the most important feature is access control. It is critical to make sure that parents can only see their children’s data and that teachers have access only to the information and classes related to them. Permissions to administrative panels must also be restricted.
In addition to the features presented on the company’s official website, it is necessary to study the privacy policy, storage terms, and data protection terms. It is also a good idea to ask the provider about the procedures for responding to a security incident. Moreover, find out the level of assistance and the provider’s reaction time for the event that your school has to switch to another LMS.
The legal requirements for data protection vary in different countries and regions depending on the LMS provider’s jurisdiction. Therefore, it is essential to study the data protection legislation to ensure that the LMS chosen by the organization meets all requirements and regulations before migrating any data to it.
5. Total Cost, Technical Support, and Future Growth
What may initially seem as a fairly-priced subscription does not necessarily guarantee an affordable LMS. Implementation, data migration, training, extra seats for concurrent users, additional integrations, and specialized support, among others, can add up to significantly high charges. Request a detailed breakdown of expenses and ensure you understand the first-year expenditures and price variations during renewals.
Technical support should also be prioritized in terms of quality and hours of operation because the school may need to rely on LMS assistance when teachers are about to lose students’ access to materials before examinations or students are about to miss submitting assignments due to a technical malfunction. In addition, one should ask about the response time, support channels, and if technical help is free of charge or would require extra payments.
Lastly, think beyond the current size of your educational institution. Perhaps the plans are to scale up enrollment or open new campuses, or offer more online courses and degree programs that would require additional seats in the LMS or even an entirely new product. It is essential to ensure that the LMS vendor can scale along with the growth of the educational organization. Therefore, compare renewal options, pricing per user, limits of simultaneous enrollment, and upgrade opportunities before ultimately choosing an LMS.
