Features for Associations in Learning Management Systems: A Guide to 5 Key Functions

As a professional in associations, you are aware of the ongoing learning, development, and transformation of your association’s members. Additionally, if your association cannot meet the needs of its members, those members will stop being active participants!

What benefits can your association provide to its members to make their membership more valuable and to help them advance their careers and marketability?

To succeed, one must have an education. If you haven’t already, your association can use a learning management system (LMS) to offer professional development opportunities to its members.

An association can create and provide its members with courses and association LMS certification, a software program, enabling them to stay current on industry best practices.

However, not every association LMS platform is created equal. What qualities should your association prioritize when choosing a software provider?

You can create the most engaging and useful courses for your members and maintain their involvement in your association by incorporating these 5 features! Now let’s get started.

1. Integrated Course Authoring

Members must be interested in taking your courses for them to be useful! Thus, be sure the association LMS you select enables your staff to create and modify courses directly on the platform.

In this way, you can be sure that your content will be presented in an eye-catching and comprehensible way and that it will be safely stored.

What can your staff include with course authoring?

• Pictures and videos to add visual appeal.
• Games to supplement other learning methods.
• Experiences with interactive drag-and-drop for variety.

You’ll undoubtedly see higher course attendance when your LMS works with your staff to design the most user-friendly, functional course possible.

2. Social Learning

When students can communicate with others and exchange ideas, queries, and hypotheses, they learn the most. This holds true for learning in elementary school as well as for continuing education in a professional setting!

Make sure the LMS you select fosters active participation from both your faculty and students in the learning community.

Using LMS features, you can easily integrate social learning into your courses in the following ways:

• Allowing students to share questions, answers, and suggestions with the instructor or other students by including a discussion forum following an assignment or assessment.
• Facilitating a real-time Q&A session with a subject matter expert where students can ask questions.
• Giving learners peer-to-peer assignments that require them to take in and process information.

3. Requesting Credit from Outside

The organization cannot offer every learning opportunity that a member requires or desires, but you can ensure that it permits and supports members to take advantage of other opportunities while they are still members.

Members wish to pursue their education in more ways than just online courses. They additionally:

• Take part in and watch live webinars.
• Attend conferences that aren’t sponsored by your association.
• Participate in additional educational events.

When they do, they want to be acknowledged for the insights they have acquired.

As a result, it’s critical that your LMS provides members with the ability to track all of their education through your association by entering credits obtained from other sources into your system.

With the help of this feature, your members can easily record their experience and choose the kind of credit they wish to receive (according to their industry or the events they attended), which your LMS will then record on their transcript or record.

4. Flexible Learning

Since each member-student is unique, you must ensure that you can provide them with a customized learning experience!

Make sure that participants choose and finish courses in the best possible way by using adaptive learning technology. You can market various classes to members using an adaptive learning management system (LMS) based on:

• Trade or industry.
• Previous assignments finished.
• Expressed interests.
• Status of mentor or mentee.

In this way, your students discover more about all the amazing courses your LMS has to offer and are exposed to the most beneficial or pertinent topics for coursework.

However, adaptive learning is beneficial both before and after classes! Your courses can automatically adjust to a student’s needs if you have an adaptive learning program in place.

For instance, you can add unique questions to assessments according to how well students perform.

When selecting a learning management system for your association, consider the flexibility of the courses.

5. Integration and Customizability

The integration of an LMS with your association’s current technological strategy is a crucial consideration that should not be overlooked when making a purchase. What is the way your LMS will integrate with the rest of your system?

The following software platforms must be easily able to communicate with your LMS:

• The software you use to manage associations.
• Your payment processing software, if it is not a part of your AMS.
• Your software for communication.

Regardless of whether you use a collection of different solutions or a single platform to manage all member administration, your LMS must smoothly integrate with your current software.

As an illustration, integrating your LMS with your AMS so that users only need to log onto your website to access it is a best practice. As a result, it will be simpler for your members to enroll in classes and for your member support team to respond to fewer support requests.

Summing Up

In addition to all these features, you should look for a learning management system that can be branded to match the aesthetic of your association. By gaining authority and trust in your association LMS, your association can be greatly enhanced by allowing the use of your logo and colors.

When choosing a platform, keep in mind that a customizable one will benefit your association more than a one-size-fits-all one.

You can now choose the best LMS for association and buy the suitable option for your staff because you know what your association needs from one. For more information, connect with LMS experts today!