How to Choose the Best LMS for Schools?

Learning Management System (LMS) fulfills the educational needs of K-12 schools, higher education institutions, school districts, etc. LMS is designed in a way that helps the teachers to develop, manage and provide online learning courses and programs. This system provides a platform for the students to learn and enhance their skills wherever and whenever they want as per their convenience.

With the help of LMS, one can administer, track, report, and deliver online learning courses. Online learning has become more fun and engaging with LMS as the platform uses video tutorials, fun stories, etc, and it even has features like gamification. This software helps cut the use of paper materials and supports online remote learning.

LMS has changed the perspective of online learning.

LMS helps teachers and school administrators overcome challenges such as the management of many assignments, assessments, and lessons creations. The best cloud-based LMS enables collaboration, assignments, creation, and viewing of the course content, assessments, tracking, and a lot more.

It is always advised to compare the top LMSs with the right criteria and do plenty of research; you can make a well-informed decision. Below I have mentioned some criteria you can keep in mind while choosing the best LMS for your school:

• Friendly User interface (UI) – The interface must be user-friendly, clean, understandable, and appealing so that it makes learning for students easy and fun. This will also help the students and teachers in adjusting to the LMS interface. Navigation must be easy so that the students can locate the grades, list, analytics, and interact with the interface without any issues.
• Easy Third Party-Integration – Once you buy LMS for your school, you should be able to integrate it with other software too, most likely attendance management software, must be able to integrate with other platforms for media development, teleconferencing, content management system (CMS), or other necessary online learning content development tool. An LMS must be able to set up easily with third-party software. Make sure to test the integration capabilities before shortlisting.
• Value for Money – Make sure the LMS you buy must be worth its cost. The software must be able to offer a huge selection of online training materials and include pre-made programs and the necessary tools for content creation. The software must be capable of creating courses and unlimited training content along with real-time reporting. Check whether the software offers ready-to-use courses and templates. Make sure to check if there are any discounts available as the cost plays a vital role when it comes to software purchases.
• Usability and Setup – Make sure the LMS you buy is easy to set up with least training. The vendor must provide excellent customer service along with tutorials and an ample amount of training. The software must work on different devices, for example, mobiles, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
• Free trial version – Before making any decision and finalizing any learning management system, make sure you check the software using the trial or free version. Using the software in the trial period ensures that your chosen system and software meets your needs and requirements, and saves you from making a costly purchase only to find later that the system doesn’t meet your needs and isn’t good enough for your school. Ideally, the trial or free version must be 30 days.
• Check user reviews – Make sure you check the reviews of whichever LMS you shortlist. It is always good to learn from the experience of people who have used the tool; this will help you in making an informed decision about its usefulness and the features you want in the LMS for your school.
• Subscription-based pricing – Most LMSs come with subscription-based pricing, which will be more affordable than making a larger single annual purchase. Opting for a subscription-based model can allow you to test features offered by a paid version without fully committing to a solution.Schools should carefully budget when purchasing an LMS and avoid paying for the feature they don’t and won’t need. K-12 schools need robust features set, and also has a larger budget to pay for LMS features, for example – mobile-based learning, gamification, etc.