Learning management system (LMS)

"LMS" gets used for almost any software that hosts a course, which makes the term less useful than it sounds. A university's Moodle or Canvas site is an LMS. So is the system a company uses to assign safety training. Many people also call creator course platforms an LMS, and in the literal sense they are.

What does an LMS do?

Strip away the feature lists and an LMS does four jobs:

• Holds the material. Video, text, files and quizzes, organized into courses and modules.
• Enrolls learners. By sign-up, invitation, payment or assignment from an administrator.
• Tracks progress. Which lessons each person has opened and completed, and how they scored.
• Reports. Gives the teacher or administrator a record of who finished, often as an export.

Everything else is a variation on those jobs, shaped by who is buying the software. A school wants gradebooks. An employer wants compliance reports. A creator wants a checkout page and a place for students to talk.

What kinds of LMS are there?

Three broad groups use the word:

• Academic LMS. Built for schools and universities, around terms, gradebooks and class rosters.
• Corporate LMS. Built for employee training, around assigned courses, compliance records, single sign-on and course packages in the SCORM standard.
• Course platforms. Built for people who sell courses to the public, around sales pages, payments and student community.

If you're an independent creator, the third group is usually the one you mean. The course platform vs LMS page covers how to choose between the second and third.

Why does tracking matter so much?

Tracking is the part of an LMS that tells you whether the course works. In corporate training, the completion record is often the point. For a creator, it's feedback. A drop-off after lesson three tells you where to look.

Completion also varies with format far more than most people expect. Katy Jordan's study of 221 large open online courses found a median completion rate of 12.6% (IRRODL, 2015). See completion rate for Ruzuku's own figures.

What should you check when choosing an LMS?

Which kind to buy is covered on course platform vs LMS. The nonprofit LMS guide works through the same questions with eight platforms side by side.

Is Ruzuku an LMS?

Ruzuku tracks each student's progress, but it has no SCORM support and no single sign-on. If a compliance buyer requires either, you need a corporate LMS.