In today’s world, almost everything has shifted to virtual platforms, right from shopping and socializing to corporate meetings and education. Many education institutes have now created LMS Considerations to make learning more accessible for everyone. In such a scenario, it is highly advisable to merge your already existing community with an LMS to create more engagement. When a community and LMS come together, it provides an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning, rather than just one subject expert talking about their course. When learners engage in community-based learning, they participate in a multi-dimensional learning experience based on the experiences of themselves and their peers, rather than gaining information from a single source in a flat environment.
LMS considerations
In this article, we will discuss how to merge your community with LMS and some of the advantages of doing so. So let’s get started!
How to incorporate community and learning in your LMS?
Community and learning are all about active engagement and increasing the participation of the learners. Here are some of the ways you can incorporate community and learn into your LMS:
- Active Learning: In the virtual classroom, you must establish defined roles with clear expectations of active participation from the learners.
- Create a space for dialogue: Create specific discussion panels for specific topics where learners can continue discussing and sharing their ideas even after the initial learning ends.
- Initiate conversation: Post thought-provoking questions with a link to a discussion panel attached to the webinar to get the conversation going.
- Share multiple resources: You can also share multiple resources from your LMS’ learning catalogue with memberships, while also encouraging the learners to share relevant and helpful resources about the subject.
- Live participation: Most LMS have integration with live services like Zoom, where you can start webinars and initiate live participation from the learners.
- Unique profiles: Encourage your learners to create unique profiles in your LMS to make the discussions more personal.
- Motivate the learners: You can give out various badges and credit scores to the most active learners who bring value to the LMS. This motivates other learners to earn these badges and credit scores and boosts engagement in your LMS.
Advantages of incorporating community with your LMS
- Helps teachers collaborate: When you incorporate your community with your LMS, it gives the teachers an opportunity to collaborate with each other and be up-to-date with each of their student’s needs. It also helps in keeping all the teachers in the loop on what is happening in the community and what can be done to make the learning experience better for the students. Moreover, it also helps the teachers to learn about things that are not particularly in their area of expertise, thus helping them gain more knowledge, and share their own ideas with other staff members.
- Encourages student independence: By encouraging peer-to-peer learning, the students no longer have to be dependent on just one source of information to learn about a particular topic. Discussion panels and active learning helps the students to ask questions and gain the information they need without having to wait for the next class to ask the subject expert. Incorporating community with your LMS also helps the students to look for resources and share their knowledge with other peers, thus encouraging student independence.
- Keep the parents in the loop: Since everyone has the access to join your community, the parents can always be in the loop of what is happening and how their children are performing in your LMS. With tools like credit scores and badges, parents can get immediate access to the growth of their children. You can also have a panel for student grades and progress all in one place for the parents to always be in the loop of their children’s education.
Conclusion
With all the technology available in today’s world, incorporating your community with the LMS is almost necessary for every education system. By boosting engagement in the community and keeping the students motivated to learn more things outside of their regular classes, you can bring in much more traffic to the community and reap long-term benefits. All you need to remember while incorporating the community with your LMS is to promote active learning, initiate conversation, create discussion panels for specific topics, and encourage live participation of the students. If you have any other questions about this topic, feel free to drop a comment below. Thank you!
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