What are the best practices for customizing LMS to personalize learning?

From my time working with educational technology, it became clear that not all LMS features are equally useful for every course or program. By closely collaborating with faculty, we identified essential features that supported active learning and engagement. For instance, implementing peer review workshops within the LMS significantly increased student interaction and feedback quality, aligning with our pedagogical goals.

Through my experience working with technology, customising a LMS to personalize learning involves tailoring the platform to meet the specific needs, preferences, and learning styles of individual learners. This process can involve the activities such as : Designing adaptive learning paths that adjust based on individual learner performance, preferences, and objectives. Utilizing algorithms or rules-based systems to personalize content recommendations based on individual learner profiles. Providing personalized feedback and recommendations based on learner performance in assessments and assignments. These objectives can be obtained by integerating different curriculum vendors, assessments and reporting tools to your LMS system.

Customizing a Learning Management System (LMS) for personalized learning requires strategic planning and precise execution. It begins with a deep understanding of learners' needs, clear objective definition, and the implementation of robust feedback mechanisms. By prioritizing these steps, organizations can develop a tailored LMS that not only addresses the distinct needs of each learner but also elevates the overall efficacy of the learning experience.

A escolha dos recursos é guiada pelos objetivos de aprendizagem a serem atendidos, assim o uso do wiki, fóruns, portfolios devem sempre buscar proporcionar uma aprendizagem significativa.

I have learned that leveraging your knowledge of both your students and your course objectives yields the best results. For example, in an automotive program at a vocational school using Canvas, educators can tailor learning experiences based on their knowledge of students' strengths and areas for growth. These detailed learner profiles can inform adaptive learning paths, targeting specific areas like engine repair or diagnostics. Canvas also supports various multimedia suiting different learning styles. It enables real-time feedback and collaborative projects, fostering a hands-on learning environment. When you know your students deeply, you can choose the most appropriate features.

To design a layout, you must apply the institution's visual identity elements, not forgetting the learning needs of that course, discipline, etc. So, remember accessibility, as there are people with specific needs, the design must be simple and assertive, at this point “Form and Function” is essential. Colors must be passive, they cannot be aggressive and unpleasant (remember color theories), images must be expressive when necessary and icons must maintain the line of identity, but in a subtle way, without attracting too much attention. Don't forget those with ADHD, too much information on the screen (that doesn't directly relate to the content) can distract them. And always keep it simple, less is more!

A organised LMS can drastically enhance the learning experience. By consulting with instructional designers, we redesigned course layouts to follow a consistent structure across programs, making it easier for students to navigate courses. Incorporating clear module objectives and estimated times for each activity directly in the course layout helped students manage their learning more effectively.

O layout do LMS é importante, pois será o ambiente onde o aluno deve se sentir a vontade para aprender e se desenvolver com as atividades, multimidias e materiais dispostos de forma harmônica e coerente.

This is the best way to personalize learning by integrating external tools. LMS by nature is more about a repository of trainings and delivering courses to the masses. Take learning outside of the LMS into other digital ecosystems to maximise the impact it to the individual or individual job role.

Pienso que entre menos herramientas externas o internas estén en juego, la experiencia será mucho mejor. Solo debería estar activo lo que se necesita y aporta valor al proceso de aprendizaje y la gran mayoria de plataformas LMS cuentan con las funciones necesarias. Todos los esfuerzos se deben enfocar en la experiencia a la hora de consumir los diferentes recursos, la analítica de datos y la accesibilidad de la plataforma y capacitaciones.

Analyze your needs, a lot of tools visible to students only help if they are used. Don't increase too much, which is not useful. Sometimes an immersive reading plug-in, access to an online meeting tool, and a reading plug-in for wax people, lots of stools are the basics, but they help a lot. Other elements can be added according to the students’ real needs. Don't forget to analyze feedback and observe the user experience carefully and actively, if necessary.

Integrating external tools can extend the capabilities of an LMS beyond its built-in features. For example, in a project I led, we integrated a popular video conferencing tool directly into the LMS to facilitate synchronous online sessions. This integration not only streamlined the process for both instructors and students but also allowed for sessions to be recorded and accessed directly within the LMS environment.

In addition to integrations, I would recommend reviewing the LMS capabilities on learner-specific global settings. Carousels of recommended learning based on collected data/AI is best, along with a Learner home to make it easier for a learner to navigate required, recommended and trending learning within the LMS.

We use the LMSs own data and Google Analytics to understand how far we are meeting our learners’ current needs and how we could try to anticipate them in the future. Key data sources are such things as: ratings and feedback systems, completion rates and assessment scores, page visitation and common user site journeys and keyword capture from the search field. It is practically impossible for us to personalise our LMS in such a way as to meet all our diverse global learners’ current and future needs, but we can systematise data capture and analytics in such a way that we steadily meet their needs more and more.

Os dados oferecidos pelos LMS servem para retroalimentar o processo de ensino aprendizagem e contribui para regulação do processo educativo e avaliativo, assim alunos que tem melhores desempenhos podem ter acesso ao novos materiais e alunos com desempenho abaixo podem ter acesso a materiais ajustados a sua realidade, assim trazendo equilíbrio e adaptabilidade aos ritmos de aprendizagem dos cursistas.

Leveraging LMS analytics has been a game-changer in understanding student engagement and performance. By analysing patterns in course access and assignment submissions, we identified students who might be at risk of falling behind and could proactively offer support. Furthermore, regular surveys embedded within the LMS provided us valuable feedback, enabling iterative improvements to courses.

Every good learning experience, whether it be online or not, should be revised and improved over time. While there aren't any magical single questions that can accomplish this, you can start by gathering feedback and analytics to better get context on what issues may be occurring. In all courses I teach, feedback usually comes informally directly to me, but there is also another feature for people to record any additional feedback if they are too shy or forget to say anything while they are actively taking the course.

Using feedback is the most effective way to manage LMS customization, as designers are better able to understand the features and needs that end users are asking for. Instead of creating a potentially chaotic situation with too many options, leveraging feedback creates boundaries around learning choices that ensures that end users feel represented and supported in their learning.

Beyond these practices, it's vital to foster a culture of continuous improvement and openness to change among all stakeholders involved. Encouraging educators to share their experiences and strategies for using the LMS can lead to a rich repository of knowledge that benefits the entire institution. Additionally, considering accessibility from the outset ensures that all learners can benefit equally from the digital learning environment.

As an extensive LMS user, Non-user-friendly administrative capabilities in an LMS can lead to increased training time and reduced efficiency in course management. Complex administrative functions can cause frustration among educators and hinder their ability to fully utilize the platform. Challenges in data management can impact the effectiveness of tailored learning experiences. Overall, these issues can result in lower adoption rates of the LMS, limiting its potential educational impact. Addressing these concerns may require additional training, support, or exploring more intuitive LMS options.

Find a way to identify the individual needs and offer the content or the training based on the specific individual need and find a way to measure the performance within the platform so that it will help the organisation to realise the return on Investment.

Considero os LMS espaços de aprendizagem importantes para atividades online, presenciais e hibridas, pois proporcionam atividades, materiais e arquivos multimidiáticos que podem e devem alcançar diferentes níveis de aprendizagem dos cursistas. Assim a aprendizagem por fluir de maneira mais significativa e interativa.