In the past several years, we have witnessed significant development and expansion in LMS offerings. Today’s platforms provide a wide range of contextual education experiences including formal or curriculum-based education, informal learning, live events, and social learning. Many of our communities value the opportunity to have a single, central repository that provides different leaning options and formats.
With so much invested in these online learning portals, it makes sense to continue to build and expand on what an LMS is able to provide. Including certifications in your online education strategy helps create a more impactful and recognized standard of achievement. Certifications are the ideal component to augment and extend the value and the investment you have made in ensuring your LMS becomes a success. In addition, certifications enable education program providers to more effectively validate and reward achievement that is recognized by one’s peers and potential employers. Essentially, offering certifications within your organizations LMS can extend the platform’s value and help build on your established success.
We have identified three key benefits of offering certification programs within your LMS:
- Create of a Pathway towards Achievement
Certification provides organizations the ability to configure a predetermined curriculum or pathway that serves as a navigator or blueprint towards a greater goal. This added enhancement provides learners a sense of purpose as they can connect their work in the LMS to an overall strategic purpose and mission. Certifications and features of the LMS are an ideal match to present content, validate progress and award achievement. Gaps in knowledge are easily identified which helps pinpoint areas for improvement.
- Leverage Your LMS more effectively
Being certified in something that typically translates into one’s expertise within a specific area of study or work. It is understood that if you are going to be certified you will typically need to invest a significant amount of time and money to reach your goal. Given this commitment, it only makes sense to leverage these achievements within your current LMS platform by offering certification programs to your learners. The days of sending learners to a third party site are coming to an end, and now it’s easier than ever to utilize your investment right within your LMS to validate course content and testing components. Bringing these participants to the LMS leverages your investment, increases traffic and avails learners to other opportunities to engage content experts and peers.
- Streamline Processes
There is a good chance your LMS is integrated with your ecosystem of applications. You may already have data reporting in place to transfer results from education activities to a third party database or AMS. Offering certifications within your LMS can piggyback on this integration and allow a seamless reporting of results without additional programming.
If you offer or plan to offer certifications to your community, consider an LMS platform that had a feature that supports these programs along with other education offerings.
To learn more about Elevate LMS and CommPartners Certification Module, please contact Meghan Gowen at mgowen@commpartner.com.
