The Learning Management System’s Journey: From Traditional E-Learning to Gamer’s Delight

As the economic disaster tightens the budgets of organizations and businesses worldwide, more are turning to online training and learning management systems to handle their training.

And parallel to the increase in organizations seeking online training solutions is the expansion of LMS technology. These days LMS courseware creators are designing online training software that seems game-like in nature, using more interactive and engaging tools.

E-learning software and virtual worlds with interfaces like games are making their way into institutions and organizations. Many organizations have already implemented or plan to adopt such software into their LMS e-learning solutions.

Based on the popularity of virtual worlds, it may not be a bad idea. EMarketer estimates that 24 percent of the 34.3 million million users under 19 years old participated in a virtual world at least monthly in 2007, a figure that is predicted to jump to 53 percent by 2011. As people become more familiar with virtual world navigation, these online skills, interactions and roles will translate more easily into a professional or educational setting.

For many people, the concept of incorporating a virtual world in a training course seems impractical or unrealistic. But more institutions and organizations worldwide have begun to explore the pedagogical and training possibilities that virtual worlds offer.

For many students, virtual worlds offer a learning system that allows them to perform tasks that in the real world cannot be carried out, for some reason.

As in a learning management system, a virtual world allows educators and trainers to share videos, simulations, and other media with students. Acting as an avatar, students can also interact with each other, or perform tasks to reveal knowledge.

Covering various topics from dental lessons to frog dissections, there are “serious game” virtual worlds available.

When integrated correctly, software like LMSs and “serious game” virtual worlds can provide students with the means to engage in the material to a point at which traditional e-learning courses never could. With a feature-rich LMS, students have access to audio and visual information in the form of simulations, screen recordings, podcasts, and more.

The bad news is that the majority of “serious games” on the market are either too expensive for many company budgets, or have a long way to go in terms of sophistication. But despite the slow development of virtual worlds for professional use, e-learning software continues to expand in learning management systems and other online tools, as they become more interactive to compete in an increasingly exciting e-learning market.

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