What You'll Learn in This Chapter:
The difference between a Learning Management system and a Learning Experience Platform is more than skin deep. An LMS is directed, predefined, facilitated, and management-driven, while an LXP is self-directed, adaptive, social, and employee-driven.
Rather than being performance-driven, both a Learning Management System and a Learning Experience Platform are focused on content consumption. An LMS’ focus is on completing content while an LXP is focused on watching content.
That would depend on what feature set is right for you. Content on an LMS is primarily packaged as SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model). This allows you to purchase a variety of already-done courses and add them to your corporate learning center. LMSs usually require you to use bookmarks, comments, collaboration, starred reviews, or versioning to know where you’re going. But they can help you create and automate some aspects of your face-to-face trainings. The big problem is that they aren’t engaging for employee use. They cater to L&D professionals, not users.
LXPs focus on the content delivery experience. They offer content discovery, skills indexing, recommendations, and content paths. They are more configurable, which allows for a more modern, user-friendly experience.
As discussed previously, the reasons vary between administration needs. An LMS is more administration heavy while an LXP is more engaging and employee-driven. Both are focused on content consumption, not performance.
First, you need to understand your objectives for the learning platform. If your primary focus is on the management and recording of learning completion, tied to compliance purposes, then choose an LMS. If you want your employees to be more engaged in the learning process, then choose an LXP. But there are other choices beyond an LMS and an LXP. We’ll discuss those in a bit.
Some LMS implementations fail because user engagement is low — especially if the courses aren’t mandated. Since LMSs use older, clunkier software, the user experience is not as engaging as other types of learning software. Course work that is found only in the classroom is knowledge that gets lost in the flow of everyday work.
The best way of ensuring success is through employee engagement and making something that is truly useful for people to do their jobs. If you can get the knowledge in the flow of work, people get their questions answered when they ask them and learn and grow in their skill sets. The knowledge must be engaging, relevant, and shareable.
To improve your LMS/LXP, you need to engage users at the point of work. The platform needs to be used on a day-to-day, continual basis, not just when it’s time for annual compliance or quarterly skills updates. Don’t treat it as an activity. It should be treated as a daily engagement.
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