Is Your Institution Losing Students? Here’s What You’re Missing!

In this fast-paced world, even the educational sector has been engulfed by technology as it is playing an increasingly important role in changing the way both students and teachers look at education. Ever since the COVID pandemic, individuals have realised the potential of online learning as well as the value of digital tools and interactive technologies.

The world has travelled far from traditional classrooms and higher education. In recent years, things have changed drastically from what it used to be before 2020. In fact, suddenly students have stopped returning to campus, opting for online universities. Recent reports suggest that a greater number of students are impressed with remote education and they are choosing the same over real-time campus experience.

A successful remote learning requires many parameters among which the first one being a quality learning management system or LMS. This blog will focus on the role of LMS in improving student retention and its positive impact on the entire educational system.

What is a Learning Management System or LMS?

A Learning Management System is a software application primarily used to monitor courses. Recently, many schools and educational institutions have turned to LMS as a remote tool for remote learning. Using this highly efficient software, students and professors of the same or different departments can communicate with one another, assign assignments, submit projects, review study materials, and even access course resources like the syllabus and the announcements.

Though COVID was not a pleasant experience, it just took the learning experience to the next level by creating opportunities for teachers to identify what keeps students attentive throughout each session.

How Does Learning Management Software Help Improve Student Retention?

Ever since the pandemic, the number of students attending universities dropped severely. Different students took breaks for different reasons. For some it was financial congestion and for others, they appreciated staying with the family.

After carefully analyzing why students were leaving institutions en masse, it was easy to find the solution they were looking for an online study resource. Through an efficient LMS, institutions can provide genuine support the students need while improving engagement rates.  The following are some of the most commonly used LMS strategies that keep students on track.

• Easily understandable navigation tools

Being unaware of where to find the basic course materials or uploading their assignments is often frustrating for students. If there is a channel that lets them find resources, it will be timesaving, and a great deal of convenience and that’s exactly what an LMS offers.

• Unique tools that keep students on track

In a physical classroom, it’s often difficult to identify students with a high risk of failing. However, it’s easy to spot these disengaged students with an LMS as it tracks the time spent by each student on the online platform as well as the time they spent on viewing each page. Features like this increase interactivity, improving student performance.

• Grade progress tools to track student performance

Students who frequently bunk classes would be at high risk of failing, which also means that they are more likely to drop out of the university or school any time soon. The grade book feature offered by LMS identifies such students and allows the faculty to monitor each student's performance and progress. It also shares a glimpse at who needs special care and attention to catch up with the course.

LMS Special Features

LMS brings a lot to the table that can seriously transform the online classroom experience into a lively environment, where students feel confident and motivated. In addition to the basic features, there are a few supplementary features that together improve student engagement, and here are some of them:

• In-course Feedback

In the traditional classroom, students often engage in real-time discussions, and the teachers and peers also conduct some direct question-and-answer sessions to analyse their overall performance. While this method does not provide accuracy when it comes to offering precise feedback on each student, the LMS fills the gap through in-course feedback by marking the points each student managed to score in each level of learning.

It also allows students to share their suggestions about the upcoming courses which would have been awkward in a face-to-face set-up.

• Achievement notification

Regardless of age, there is a competitive spirit that lies within everyone, and once it’s activated, people become highly encouraged to achieve certain goals. LMS encourages personal and group challenges, and when a student surpasses or outperforms their peers, the software automatically sends immediate feedback to cheer up the achiever while tracking their records.

• Responsive Design

While there are schools where students are provided with similar devices to access the internet, there are also students who are left with no other choices rather than accessing the educational tools with whatever device they have. For this reason, an efficient LMS comes with a responsive design that lets students access the content from any device. Rather than making it a website, a mobile app is a way better option that comes with reliability as it’s a practical option for learners.

The beneficiaries of this feature are not limited to the students, but it also benefits the faculty who appreciate the ability to easily access student work on a tablet or phone.

The Positive Impact of LMS in Education

LMS has made learning enjoyable while making it simple for teachers and students to collaborate with each other. It incorporates various learning styles into one software, ensuring the needs of each student are addressed. These perks have together made learning more personal.

• Increased access to educational resources

LMS is a storehouse of various learning resources that include e-books, educational websites, research papers, online databases, and others. Sometimes teachers also attach YouTube tutorials and other digital libraries to keep things more exciting.

This has resolved one major issue where students from certain places and backgrounds experienced limitations in accessing the same study materials as others, offering fairness in education.

• Improved communication and collaboration

While there used to be an awkward stage between teachers and students, especially when it comes to communication and collaboration, it has been eliminated, especially with the emergence of technologies like LMS. These tools let students share their feedback and suggestions if any.

To make them interactive as in a traditional classroom structure, LMS provides video conferencing facilities that push students to come up with new brainstorming thoughts. The software also shows flexibility, providing features like leave-in comments for the platform users to see later. This makes it 10 times easier for students and teachers to work in a collaborative manner that also fits their individual schedules.

• Elevated student engagement

LMS makes learning exciting with interesting interactive tools like virtual simulation and quizzes. These features were incorporated to make learning more fun rather than structured like how it used to be. It also allows students to learn at their own speed without disrupting the learning patterns of their peers.

Conclusion

Today, LMS is seen almost everywhere including businesses and institutions and given its significance in this post-pandemic world, it’s highly encouraged to be incorporated in each institution, if at all you don’t want to be left out. However, choosing the appropriate LMS is necessary to address your goals.

Our experts at IPIX Technologies are determined to design customized LMS software that defines your specific goals and needs. Contact us today to level up your game.