What is an eLearning Platform?

“72% of organisations interviewed believe that eLearning helps them increase their competitive edge by keeping up with the changes in their particular market.” [Source]. Indeed, an eLearning platform has emerged as an effective training methodology. It is gaining acceptance among organisations at an accelerated pace — and for all the right reasons. The eLearning market is flush with many best-in-class, intuitive platforms, that offer a comprehensive learning experience — which is fun, engaging, interactive, and informative.

However, if you are new to eLearning at your workplace, your initial question might be: what is an eLearning platform? An eLearning platform is an online learning platform that integrates all the tools and technologies required to deliver the complete digital training experience. Additionally, it brings together trainers, learners, and related personnel and enriches them with the necessary information and resources — required to support and enhance educational delivery and management. One of the most common eLearning platforms is the Learning Management System (LMS).

Multiple eLearning vendors hand outright eLearning platforms. While some platforms enable you to host online courses, others allow you to run your own business. Again, specific platforms come with an interface that will allow learners to interact with your content. So, how do you know which eLearning platform is the best solution for your company? What are the significant types of eLearning platforms? Let’s get started.

What Are the Different Types of eLearning Platforms?

You can broadly segment eLearning platforms into the following types:

Learning Destination Sites

A learning destination site brings together learning materials from different vendors. In short, it serves as a shared website. Moreover, you can author your courses with the help of an authoring tool or an LMS like PlayAblo. You can then upload or link the courses to the site.

Traditional Learning Management System

A traditional Learning Management System is software that has all the elements required to create, host, and distribute online courses. Designers and developers can use an LMS to author courses, store them, manage learning profiles, report grades, and track progress. Now, the eLearning market has over 700 LMS providers. While most of them design Learning Management Systems for internal corporate training, quite a few also offer extended enterprise features, making it easier to overhaul old content for external trainees.

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Open Source Learning Management System

An Open-source Learning Management System embeds the essential tools needed for developing and hosting an online course. It is similar to an LMS — with the only difference being in the charges and customisation capability. Additionally, Open-source LMS is free of charge, and each platform comprises a mix of vendors, who configure, host, and customise the solutions for free.

Modern Learning Management Solutions

Traditional Learning Management Systems have their own set of challenges. Therefore, this has led to a new wave of modern LMS solutions. Such vendors focus on delivering a learner experience and sometimes on specific pedagogies. However, traditional LMS solutions might not always support such solutions.

Learning Management Ecosystems

Another category of eLearning platforms is the learning management ecosystem. With this model’s help, organisations look to use best-of-breed “point” solutions and combine them into one platform. You can then integrate the platform with elements like course authoring software, assessment tools, adaptive learning engines, eCommerce sites, and learning content management solutions. The Learning Management Ecosystems usually pair up with a custom front end, which creates an illusion of a single system.

Custom Built Learning Platform

The final type of eLearning platform is the complete custom-built learning platform; for instance, PlayAblo. When you implement this solution, you have to create all, or most, of the technology you need from scratch by concentrating on serving the business, learner, and pedagogy. Hence, although this solution takes time for the full-fledged deployment and arrives with high, one-time costs, it gives you precisely what you want. You even have complete control over the learner experience and course direction.

How to Choose an E-Learning Platform

Here are a few pointers that can help you decide how to pick the right solution from the different eLearning platforms available. A successful eLearning platform creates a robust learning experience that gives a complete classroom experience. It replicates the traditional classroom elements like instructor-student interaction, Q&As, discussion, games, collaborative projects, quizzes, etc. But when you deliver the courses online on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile, you need to invest in features and tools that create the level of interaction and engagement students need.

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Each learner has a distinct learning style. Therefore, the learning platform you choose should host different content formats to address your learner’s specific learning styles. Some content formats include articles, interviews, webinars, charts, PowerPoint presentations, simulations, and video. However, here, we have given only a select few examples of content formats that one can use in eLearning.

eLearning platforms should also include content modules, learning modules, evaluation modules, and communication modules. These modules allow your training program to incorporate various teaching styles for every learner. If you take the services of PlayAblo, you can boost their performance level and knowledge-retention levels.

Are you looking at selecting an eLearning platform for your workplace? These articles will help you deep-dive into the process:
How to Select an LMS in 2021: Your Step-by-step Guide
Checklist for Implementing Your Enterprise LMS!

Conclusion

Every problem demands a different solution. And the same applies to choosing an eLearning platform as well. When you have constraints in time, resources, and money, you need to put in a lot of research before arriving at the final decision. You can also follow the tips in this article to make the correct choice.