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10 Strategies to Create Personal Learning Experiences in Your LMS

Blog posts | 24.03.2021

Steve Lowenthal

CEO - Kineo US at Kineo US

What theme do the following have in common?

  • Goldilocks and her search for porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold
  • Spotify skyrocketing to market leader in streaming with playlists
  • Burger King’s famous “Have it your way” campaign in the ‘70s

 

All of these examples speak to the power of designing or producing something that meets an individual’s requirements, known as personalization. The concept of personalization ripples through many of our experiences today, and learning is no different. Well-crafted learning experiences are tailored to learners’ needs and preferences and aren’t expected to be “one size fits all.”

 Learning technology is at the epicenter of creating personalized experiences for employees. If you’re presenting every learner with the same content, the same dashboard, and the exact same experience, are you confident you’re using your LMS effectively?

 Let’s explore ten ways you can offer your learners a personalized learning experience with your LMS to meet each individual’s unique needs.


1. LMS personalization with landing pages and dashboards

The popular streaming service Netflix has become synonymous with the ideal customer experience. Their personalized landing page allows you to quickly resume shows you have in progress and peruse top recommendations based on your viewing history. Finding the content you want is simple, enjoyable, and can be accomplished with minimal clicking.

Does your LMS create a similar experience? How easy or difficult is it to locate specific content and courses? Consider personalized landing pages, which create “the Netflix effect,” defined as, “A move towards more convenient, personalized content. The success of Netflix shows that consumers want products that are easy to use and tailored to match their preferences.” Personalized landing pages create the ideal learning experience, serving up recommendations and relevant content at the click of a button.


2. Auto-assigning learning based on course completion, organization, role, and more

Automate your content assignment quickly and efficiently by organizing your learners into audiences based on the criteria of your choosing (such as their role or course completion status). By doing so, you can communicate with and assign content to relevant individuals when they join the organization, change roles, or need a reminder to complete required training.

In addition to course assignments, other LMS features such as dashboards, menus, and information can be made available to certain audiences, allowing you to provide relevant information to those who need it. Providing custom learning experiences creates clear and concise communication when your learners receive content focused on their individual needs.


3. Personalized learning paths through courses by creating access rules

Once your learners are sorted into audiences, continue to personalize their experience by tailoring the materials that make up a course. For a course like your annual code of conduct training, major elements may be relevant for everyone in the course, but some pieces will only apply to a subset of employees. You may also want to tailor specific sections to different employee groups. Access rules allow you to set criteria which must be met in order for learners to view or complete an activity or item within a course.

Whether you sort by role, region, user profile, or any other criteria, restricting content through access rules not only keeps confidential matters limited to those who need to know, it helps remove clutter and noise from presenting learners with content that is irrelevant to their needs.


4. Create visual reports containing data tailored to the user

Managers and trainers need to be able to access their employees’ data, ideally on-demand without having to go through the LMS admin. Custom reports allow managers to do just that, tracking learner completion and competencies, seminar attendance, and other HR data. Giving managers the information they need in automated reports that are easy to read saves precious time, and enables managers to make use of this information to help improve both individual and organizational performance.


5. Use competency profiles for current and future roles to motivate employee learning and development

Competency profiles allow learners to view and manage progress against assigned competencies for either their current role, or a role they aspire to hold. Percentages, charts, and graphs can be used to indicate learners’ progression towards competency mastery, providing valuable insight into their strengths as well as their areas of opportunity.

By using competency profiles, performance evaluation and goal setting have never been easier. Learning becomes a powerful tool in helping both individual learners as well as teams and organizations upskill to reach their clearly defined goals.


6. Set up a playlist

Empower your learners to organize their favorite learning assets including courses, podcasts, videos, and more, into playlists. Similar to playlists they may have organized on their favorite streaming services, playlists within the LMS allow them to collect and sort their favorite content for easy access.

Playlists can also help learners make progress toward their goals by helping them focus on content centered on a particular theme, such as leadership development. Public playlists allow learners to share content and make recommendations to one another, encouraging relationship-building and social learning.


7. Add a quick poll so learners can compare their thoughts with others

A single-question survey can trigger reflection and action. Learners provide their opinion, recommendation, or other input, and then immediately see how their thinking compares to peers across the organization. Making this alignment, or lack of alignment, explicit can trigger introspection and give subsequent learning experiences a new focus or meaning.


8. Leverage the power of a recommendation engine

Recommendation engines are part of what creates the “Netflix effect” in learning management systems. As their name implies, they recommend content and courses to learners based on their interests, completion history, and profiles. Deliver LMS personalization by giving each learner a unique list of recommendations tailored to their needs and interests, and lead them right to the content that will help them achieve their personal and organizational goals.


9. Reward learners with certificates

One of the best LMS features to document employee learning is the use of certificates. These documents can be awarded upon the completion of courses or activities, and can be generated automatically by the LMS (requiring no manual administrative work!). Create meaningful experiences by customizing your certificates with your organization’s information, and by allowing learners to download and save certificates for recognition outside of the LMS.


10. Motivate learners with badges and Leaderboards

Make employee learning and development a truly enjoyable experience by using gamification, the technique of using game-inspired strategies to reward learners for accomplishing challenges. Badges serve as a sort of digital currency and a certificate of completion. They can be awarded through the LMS and can even be displayed on external sites such as LinkedIn, demonstrating a learner’s achievement or mastery of a particular skill set. The act of collecting and displaying badges can be highly motivating and is an excellent way of rewarding learners for their efforts.


Bring your learning to life and replace inflexibility with Kineo’s versatile open source suite of platform solutions, built with totara inside. Whatever your learning need, we’ve got the right solution for you.  

Our Suite of Totara solutions are powered by our world class support and customised services, giving your learning strategy the flexibility it needs. 


Steve Lowenthal

CEO - Kineo US at Kineo US


Steve Lowenthal has over 15 years of experience in Learning Technologies in consultancy, sales and management roles. He's a regular speaker at US conferences and events on trends in LMS, elearning and technology.