Acquiring new students online is the end goal of most online educators. When you have decided to start an online education business or transform your corporate training into an online procedure, you will be wondering how to draw and engage more people towards your educational platform. There are various ways by which you can increase the number of users on your platform. However, one of the most efficient ways is to integrate your learning management system with third-party applications like social media and email marketing software so that you reach out to a greater audience. This article will discuss what are LMS integrations and how do they work?
What is LMS integration?
Integration is a connection between two applications. It’s a way to connect two different services or systems so that they can work together.
In the case of LMS learning management system,
The interoperability of your learning management system with the business software you already use is referred to as LMS integration. It enables you to transfer data between systems, automate operations, and obtain seamless reporting.
Why is LMS Integration required?
There are several reasons why you’d want to integrate your LMS with another solution:
- To add features that aren’t available in your LMS
- To add features that are available in your LMS but require coding knowledge
- To remove duplicate functionality from your LMS
For example, if we integrate an LMS with a learning program, you may have built an LMS
and have been using it for quite some time. But now you want to start adding things like assessments, gamification, and micro-learning to your LMS. Here’s how LMS integrations can help:
Benefits of integration with a learning program:
With effective LMS integration:
- Your learners are automatically assigned the right courses, certifications, and licenses they need.
- You can instantly send your learners all the training they need, no matter where it lives.
- Your learners have one easy-to-use system for training, innovation, and compliance.
- You can accept payments on your LMS using an integration
Types of integrations
Let’s take a quick look at different types of LMS integrations that you might consider for your business.
Most Learning Management Systems come with a variety of integrations to support a variety of training scenarios. During the selection process of an LMS, you should particularly pay attention to a few key ones as you will most likely use them in the future:
1. Content Management
To quickly bring current learning content into your LMS courses, your LMS should also link with G Suite and Office365. If your company wants to employ pre-made, ready-to-use courses, search for an LMS that interfaces well with content libraries.
2. E-Commerce
Creating, distributing, and selling online courses will be difficult if your LMS does not provide e-commerce interfaces. Your online training software should be compatible with the majority of popular payment services, such as Stripe, PayPal, and Shopify, so that your consumers can buy your material quickly, securely, and from anywhere in the globe.
3. API
To speed up operations, your LMS should have an open API. Creating courses, registering users, generating progress status lists, and updating user actions are all time-consuming manual tasks that may be automated.
4. Team Management
Your LMS and team management software should work together easily. This interface allows you to link your LMS and HR data, making it much easier to import and manage your personnel while also minimizing the time spent repeating information between systems.
5. Single Sign-on
Your LMS’s single sign-on functionality allows your users to sign in to their training platform account using their current cloud account login details. To make it easier for your learners to access business training at any time, the integration should support all major cloud services.
The difference between integration and plugins:
It would be easy to confuse integrations with plugins. The difference between them is that integrations are usually more complex than simple plugins. A plugin can be used to add or extend the functionality of the software, whereas an integration usually requires a lot of programming code to make it work.
Conclusion:
An LMS integration is a tool that bridges your learning platform and another software to provide information in a single location. An LMS can be the difference between failing and succeeding with a particular learning management system.