An Organization's Introduction to eLearning and Platform Selection
Do you need an LMS? Maybe one day, but you probably don't need to decide now.
If you're on the fence, odds are good you're not a school system or an Institution of Higher Education (IHE), and you may not need one at all.
Starting around 2020, when pandemic closures sent many professional learning organizations into asynchronous delivery, platforms built for schools felt necessary for any nonprofit trying to reach external audiences or internal staff. It turns out those platforms are often:
- Expensive: per-seat pricing adds up quickly and makes "cost of ownership" a tricky variable.
- Not a great fit: enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS) focus on capturing grades and credit requirements while integrating with a district or university's student information system. These are features nonprofits rarely need or care about.
- Compliance driven: built around requirements for learners, not flexibly engaging professionals or volunteers.
Our team has supported over a dozen nonprofits delivering professional development internally and externally, and we've learned to ask a few questions we'll share with you below. When you're ready, we offer a platform selection service. But we think it's best to start by delivering some learning modules to your intended audience.
- You can deliver most learning assets online, including eLearning modules, to a targeted group of learners without an enterprise LMS.
- That's backwards. Publish, pilot, and learn about your business requirements before committing to a platform.
- Building courses in an LMS is how you get locked in. Build learning assets in universal file types with authoring tools, not an LMS, and take them with you from platform to platform as you grow.
- Authoring tools make assets and modules of learning. Platforms host them. See the metaphors below to disentangle the two.
- SCORM is an industry-standard file type that works in most enterprise LMS, but you can pilot and publish eLearning without it. Web hosting and xAPI are options to explore depending on your requirements.
- Content built in universal formats works on whatever platform you pick later. Start building now.
- Platforms don't create engagement; relevant, well-designed learning does. Adoption is a design problem, not a hosting problem.
- "Free" platforms shift costs to admin time, hosting, and support, and they still shape your content around their structure.
- Small orgs benefit most from portable modules. A handful of PDFs, videos, and web modules can serve a whole network without any platform.
- If your assets are in universal formats, moving is a weekend, not a rebuild. Lock-in comes from where you build, not where you host.
Confused by any of these terms? Read on. Already know them and want to jump to a self-assessment?
How the pieces connect
Expertise goes in. Universal formats come out. Platforms come last, and audiences connect through them. Use the 🏠 / 🎵 story toggle above to switch the metaphor.
The lock-in trap
Don't lock into a platform until you know how your audience will use it. Platforms often charge per learner, bind you to multi-year licenses, and require costly integration with your other systems. A pilot answers the questions a contract can't:
Skip the lock-in: get learning assets in front of your audience as a trial, test, or pilot, and learn.
Integral Ed has expertly designed and developed all of our asynchronous e-learning courses, significantly enhancing our capacity to serve educators flexibly and effectively. They worked kindly and effectively with our internal subject matter experts to ensure the content of the courses was accurate, clear, and compelling and would help users meet the objectives of each course. Their support was crucial as we selected and set up our online learning management system. They have been instrumental as we deployed online and blended courses through our sales catalog, enabling us to reach broader audiences with consistent, high-quality professional development.
Integral Ed does an amazing job of understanding who we are as an organization. They thoughtfully translate our content into interactive courses that take our work to the next level.
Integral Ed was extremely engaged with all stakeholders. They built creative solutions to meet our values and our goals, and delivered a beautiful and comprehensive final product that felt true to HOPE.
Build in universal formats first
Assets built this way snap together like Lego, into different courses for different audiences, and move from platform to platform when you finally choose (or build) your home.
The same assets work in all three. That's the point.
So, do you need an LMS?
Two honest questions. Thirty seconds.
Take the decision with you
A one-page checklist covering the questions above: formats to require, contract terms to negotiate, and the pilot plan that answers the rest.
Integral eLearning is a division of Integral Ed Services, an educator-led learning and media design firm for mission-driven organizations.