The L&D department can ease the burden of having to continuously ensure that employing training is in full force to address any skill gaps by using a Learning Experience Platform (LXP). The LMS, which has been around for nearly 100 years, has continued to grow into the latest iteration, the LXP. However, both are still in existence. An LMS focuses more on the administration of learning than the learning experience while an LXP focuses on the ability to facilitate personalized learning.

Nowadays, these two platforms are often combined into one LXP, benefitting administrators and employees. Additionally, LXPs often can integrate the corporate learning system with third-party systems so there is only one learning platform. This blog post looks at the differences between the two forms of learning platforms and the top 5 ways LXPs benefit businesses.

The LMS

The first LMS was developed in 1924 when Sidney Pressey, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, invented the first “teaching machine.” It resembled a typewriter and contained two windows: one that could administer questions and one that could answer them. Over the decades, there have been many improvements. In the digital stage, the LMS became the standard software organizations used to track and manage employee training processes. The learning platform works great as a one-way stream of information from the company to the employee. The employee logs in and interacts with the company-assigned courses, and the LMS can store and monitor the employee’s progress. Focusing on broad outcomes, the LMS is used to administrate, manage, deliver, and track online training courses. The platform is administrator-led as the organization has control over the courses employees take, shepherding them through learning roadmaps so they consume their assigned content.

M The LXP

While the LMS focuses more on tracking courses that employees need to take or have taken, LXPs help organizations move toward more interactive, personalized learning focused on the employee experience. Although the features and functionalities differ among LXPs, they may provide the following benefits to L&D teams and team managers.

The Top 5 Benefits of LXPs

1. Increases Learning Opportunities

Your organization can use an LXP to personalize learning to suit the requirements of each employee, who from the course catalog and other connecting third-party apps can choose which skills to learn and which domains to explore to advance in their career. Comparable to a music or video streaming service, the LXP is an on-demand system that allows employees to create their own playlist, consisting of internal and external customized content. LXPs offer a user-centered experience with a variety of social learning and community features that curate content from a company’s internal digital learning sources and user-generated content within an interactive environment. Providing a system like this allows employees to decide what they want to learn, resulting in higher rates of productivity and increased learning engagements, employee satisfaction, and information retention.

2. Gives Employees Control of Content

Centered around learners, LXPs can serve as a resource library and a community-building intranet for the entire employee network. The LXP gives employees a great deal of control over the content they consume as they can choose their focus areas and learning content. The platform creates a personalized learning experience, providing a single point for all digital learning.

Every user logging in to the LXP has a slightly different experience with the homepage as it’s tailored to each person’s own learning path gleaned from manager-assigned courses, user experience, and social feeds. Users can learn remotely on any device and select relevant courses that have been presented to them based on company demands, colleague recommendations, and machine learning algorithms.

3. Decreases Administrative Duties

LXPs offer a customizable hands-on employee portal for onboarding, product training, announcements, and continual learning. They also help L&D professionals ensure the right people turn up to the right training at the right time. Instead of L&D and management professionals having to constantly assign new courses, the system itself helps users define their goals and home in on the areas that matter to their self-development. Employees can design their own learning plans for development with little input from L&D.

4. Helps Management Understand Employee Capabilities

LXPs help managers identify skill gaps, prioritize key skills, and ensure the right employees take essential courses. LXPs can detect how well learners absorb the information in a course and can integrate with other systems to deliver personalized learning content. This allows L&D teams and administrators to track employee progress and determine how effective the training is and how it influences the work that people perform, making it easier to calculate ROI. The data gleaned from LXPs can be used to help management define learning strategies to bridge skill gaps and adjust learning and developmental goals. The data also helps administrators work with trainers and managers to set goals that meet business demands.

5. Increases Engagement Among Colleagues

LXPs aim to create a more interactive workplace by connecting employees to one another across locations around the world, increasing company affinity. Communication features allow employees to provide feedback on courses, helping the company decide whether they want to tweak them or look for other courses that may be more appropriate. Consistent communications that encourage multi-way engagement are key to maintaining rapport between co-workers, allowing employees and the business to grow collectively across departments, building unity within the workplace. Many platforms include rating systems like those on popular social media networks, allowing users to leave public comments and share links to content they found to be useful. Learners can also share their knowledge with colleagues and build their reputation scores as individuals rate each other’s comments, helping those who share to become known as authorities. Using the platform, people can influence and support one another. They can also post news about courses they’ve taken and recommend them to other workers in the same or similar job roles. When employees are more focused and engaged in the learning experience and social interactions among their peers, they’re more likely to stay connected to the learning system. Various scholarly research papers have demonstrated that engaging students with one another in the learning process increases their attention and focus and motivates them to engage in higher-level critical thinking.

Originally published at https://www.exitcertified.com.