4 Training Trends In 2015 That Can Be Applied To eLearning  Below are 4 training trends in 2015 that can be applied to eLearning within the workforce. Gamification. Gamification is the integration of game principles and mechanics into a non-game experience. As such, it has been put into organizational courses or into organizational curriculum. When integrated well, and instilled with a purpose, gamification can be beneficial to the eLearning industry. It not only gives a sense of competition to increase engagement, but can help employees practice and put to use the modules they completed. In addition, it can help upper management gain a better understanding of how well employees are grasping the training and if they are utilizing the skills learned in the right manner. Mobile Learning. Within the last 10 years mobile learning has crossed over into multiple industries, including higher education, where people can earn degrees online from online colleges. With remote work environments sprouting within various industries, employees are no longer in the office Monday through Friday. Because of that, it’s important for organizational training to be on-the-go as well. Not just through desktop computers, but accessible through multiple devices, from laptops to tablets and smartphones. Making training more available to employees can help them set their own pace and schedule for completing the training. Mobile learning can also help innovate different training techniques that aren’t found in traditional training methods. Rich Media. From informational videos to well designed templates, rich design and media has allowed training to become more interactive on the user end. This is very much in line with a major 2015 business trend where video is the more popular form of communication than text. Why? Because video is "more engaging and impactful" than text and people retain more information than just from reading. As Ron Zamir, President and CEO of AllenComm explains, "By bringing rich media into your blending learning, you’re going to have better outcomes. Video and animated graphics are easy to place within well-designed templates. We can significantly shorten seat time by using rich storytelling techniques to provide context, while using exploratory activities for content that needs to be practiced and retained…When employees connect more with the material, you will get better fulfillment of the training goals". In order for employees to become more engaged during the training process as well as retain information, rich media should be incorporated. Personalization. One of the keys to employee engagement in today’s workforce is personalization. With various eLearning platforms, from network based to internet-based, employees can learn at a different pace and in different styles. This helps improve the quality of training as it’s tailored to employees, which can give a better ROI for an organization. Personalized training can also give data and help upper management see strengthens and weaknesses within their workforce and where training efforts need to be made. Look for eLearning to continue grow and become more innovative in connection with future trends of the training industry, which will help create a more customized, accessible, and influential training model to organizations. Download Allen Communication’s 2015 Training Trends whitepaper to learn more. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Personalization Is The Future: How To Design Personalized Learning Experiences Personalization represents a move away from the one-size-fits-all training strategy. New technologies and platforms enable learning to be very customized and accessible anywhere, any time. Let's look at 3 personalization trends: 1. Adaptive learning tools can help you understand the individual needs of your learners. Your learners are used to personalized experiences when they buy products. For example, when you visit Amazon.com you’ll see a section that offers suggestions based on what other customers have viewed or bought. Adaptive learning is similar to this example, but instead of recommending products, it presents learners with personalized content based on their progress in the eLearning program. Learning managers, Instructional Designers, and content authors now need to respond quickly to the needs of the organization and its learners. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and authoring tools are assisting with this new challenge, offering analytics to help learning teams better understand how their learners are progressing through their content. Here’s a quick look at the analytics inside Elucidat's authoring tool: Analytics like this help you identify what parts of your courses are being viewed and completed. You can use this intelligence to improve the experience for your learners. For example, if some content is being skipped over you can rethink how you communicate that section of the course. You might need to make it shorter -or chunk it up- so that it’s easier for learners to digest. Modern learners need a personalized experience. You can no longer stick with the mantra of one size fits all. Tools like Elucidat make delivering adaptive eLearning fast and simple. 2. Experience API captures additional learner insights outside the Learning Management System. Your eLearning is probably only one part of a blend that combines face-to-face sessions, on-the-job training, coaching, and other learning interactions. If your organization conforms to the 70:20:10 model, then most of the learning takes place like this: 70% from on-the-job experience. 20% from feedback and working with other colleagues. 10% from training courses. How are you tracking this multi-channel experience? Your Learning Management System may be able to track 10% of the learning, but how do you track performance of on-the-job experience and feedback from others? Finding ways to create record stores of individuals’ learning experiences from multiple sources can help you leverage the 90% learning that’s taking place in the tacit or informal channels. Elucidat uses SCORM to track learner progress, but it doesn’t capture the 90% of learning that goes on outside the Learning Management System. Experience API (Tin Can), also known as xAPI, can help you define a more personalized approach to managing learning. xAPI can record learning from mobile devices and content not delivered via Learning Management System. It allows you to track, capture, share, and analyze learning across different devices. eLearning authoring tools that utilize xAPI can help you capture learning experiences that are currently invisible. The data that Tin Can API collects will give you greater insights into how relevant and useful your content is to learners. 3. Augmented learning is where virtual reality meets adaptive learning. Imagine learning environments not constrained in a training room that can adapt in real time to learners’ inputs or needs. Augmented learning is where virtual reality meets adaptive learning. Developments in technology and devices such as the virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift, have big potential for making learning more personalized. A very simple demonstration of the use of such technology is BMW’s vision for training service personnel using augmented learning. How To Design Personalized Learning Experiences You don’t need an Oculus Rift headset to design personalized learning experiences. Learning can be personalized in a number of simple ways. For example, you could offer a personalized certificate upon completion of a course. Here are 5 ideas to help you design personalized learning paths: Create an ecosystem to support people in their jobs. Job aids, just-in-time learning nuggets, and small chunks of learning or resources can provide additional support to learners on the job. Create placement tests. These will help start individual learners at the right point in the learning journey. Some learners may need to start at the beginning, whilst other may not. Some parts of a course may be relevant for all learners, whilst other areas may be relevant only to a few. Build continuous assessments into programs. This will help learners understand how they are progressing and whether they need to go back to review previous content. Create dynamic menus. Learners can use these menus to identify where they are in the course and quickly jump straight into parts offering the content they need to learn. Build branching courses. Use an authoring tool that enables you to create scenario questions that take learners to different parts of the course depending on how they respond. Here’s a screenshot of a scenario question inside a course built with Elucidat: Final Takeaways  Remember that personalization is all about offering learners a personal choice. Not all learners are equal; many will have different needs, goals, and styles of learning. Keep the following points in mind when you’re designing personalized learning: Learners have different goals. Frequent feedback is the best way to let learners know how they are doing. Regular assessments help learners understand what they don’t know and what they should focus on learning. Learners need continuous opportunities to consolidate their learning through on-the-job practice. Stay on top of the latest eLearning ideas, trends, and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Exploring The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Rapid eLearning At PulseLearning, we know that although rapid eLearning might not be appropriate for every course, there is a time and place for its use. In this article, we explore the main advantages and disadvantages of rapid eLearning. Rapid eLearning Advantages  Faster development time. Most traditional eLearning design processes go something like this. A Subject Matter Expert (SME) and Instructional Designer (ID) discuss content, the Instructional Designer writes the storyboard, which then goes through quality checks before heading back to the Subject Matter Expert for changes and sign-off before build begins. The built course then goes through a similar loop. In rapid eLearning, usually the Subject Matter Expert writes the content directly into an authoring tool under the guidance of an Instructional Designer, cutting out quite a few process steps and significantly reducing development time. Cost-effective. Because the Subject Matter Expert or Instructional Designer will write content directly into a rapid authoring tool, there isn’t a need to spend money on sophisticated development to build the product. There are several effective, user-friendly authoring tools available that don’t require development experience, such as Captivate, Lectora, and Storyline. Rapid eLearning can also be cheaper to produce due to the reduced development time. Direct Subject Matter Expert input. With rapid eLearning there is less chance of content being misinterpreted by the Instructional Designer, because the Subject Matter Expert is the primary content author. It also means the Subject Matter Expert has stronger ownership of the content, which is likely to increase their engagement in the project. Rapid eLearning Disadvantages Lack of sound Instructional Design methodology. Most rapid eLearning projects will require the involvement of an Instructional Designer to guide the Subject Matter Expert in authoring content, because Instructional Design methodology is key to how content is understood and retained. Removing the Instructional Designer from the process entirely can result in poor organization of information and reduced pedagogical integrity in the final product. Quality issues. Rapid eLearning can potentially produce dull eLearning. There are some important technical aspects that are easily forgotten in rapid eLearning, including user experience (UX). A sound user experience plays a critical role in a positive, engaging learning experience and it’s unlikely that Subject Matter Experts will have sound knowledge of user experience principles. Compromised engagement and motivation. Audience engagement is closely linked to the quality of the product so if this slips, learners can lose motivation toward the training. Maintaining a positive attitude toward corporate training is important for building a learning culture within your organization so employees see that their skill development is valued, resulting in increased productivity and a positive work attitude. View our Rapid eLearning Case Study; our Client CA technologies reduced content development time by 50%. Project Overview: Our Client CA technologies partly outsourced learning content development services to PulseLearning. The main objectives behind this move were to reduce overheads, increase productivity, reduce time to market, and enable CA management to focus on longer-term business strategy. Take a look at the results in the Full Case Study. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How Performance Support Tools Can Supplement Compliance Courses  In this article, I will share 3 examples that illustrate how Performance Support Tools supplement Compliance courses. Let me begin with a quick recap of what Performance Support Tools (or PSTs) are. Then I will share 3 examples to illustrate how Performance Support Tools can be used to supplement compliance courses. I quote from my article Performance Support Tools: Top 5 Things Your Boss Wants To Know. What are Performance Support Tools and where exactly do they fit in an organization's learning strategy? Performance Support Tools (PSTs) provide employees with on-the-job tools that make their work a lot easier. Unlike training, these tools are available to support and guide employees as they actually do their jobs. These tools are very easy to find, often directly embedded into the learners’ workflow (Learning Hub) and offer active guidance. These solutions enable organizations to provide the right amount of task guidance, support, and productivity benefits to learners precisely at the moment of need. How do Performance Support Tools help learners? Performance Support Tools provide an option for employees to learn and work at the same time. They can help an organization to reduce the cost of training while increasing productivity and performance. How can you enhance the impact of your compliance initiatives with Performance Support Tools intervention?  I quote again from my article Performance Support Tools: Top 5 Things Your Boss Wants To Know. The real solution lies in creating "learning as a continuum". A good way to do this is to identify the areas for formal training and use Performance Support Tool intervention to reinforce it shortly after the formal session. You can then create a "learning path" that has interventions like this during the year. A combination of reinforcement as well as new assets that push application of knowledge on-the-job will help you create a high degree of knowledge recall, retention, and application. We have successfully integrated Performance Support Tool intervention into compliance mandates by creating a learning path (rather than just the formal training that happens a finite number of times in a year). Let me share 3 examples that illustrate how we leveraged the power of Performance Support Tools to create awareness or reinforcement of the compliance mandate. Example 1: Performance Support Tool to reinforce message on conflict management. Innovation: We have used whiteboard animation as the design approach here. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops. Focus of the Performance Support Tool: This is one of my favorite approaches and the example featured here showcases its effectiveness in complementing a compliance course (on conflict management). Simple illustrations (that use real-life scenarios) and concise audio drive the message very effectively. The Performance Support Tool outlines that conflicts always exist and outlines how you can recognize them and ascertain ways and means to mitigate them. Example 2: Performance Support Tool as a prequel to a compliance course - to create awareness on whistleblowing.  Innovation: We have used an Adobe After Effects-based design approach here. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops. Focus of the Performance Support Tool: Often, whistleblowing is perceived to be negative but as we all know, when this is done in good faith, it is the right approach. To meet this precise challenge, we designed this Performance Support Tool as a prequel to the main eLearning course. It helps learners understand the value of the whistleblowing concept and uses a scenario to reinforce when learner action is necessary. Example 3: Performance Support Tool to reinforce best practices on Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE). Innovation: We have used a combination of animations, subtle music and typography to highlight the message. The Performance Support Tool is available to learners in their mobile devices (both tablets and smartphones) as well as laptops/desktops. Focus of the Performance Support Tool: This Performance Support Tool supplements the primary eLearning course and provides a recap of the best practices pertaining to Health, Safety, and Environment aspects. It also features a scenario to reinforce the required learner action. You can also refer to my earlier article 5 Innovative examples to boost your workforce performance with Performance Support Tools (PSTs) where I have shared the first two examples showcased here. The article also has three other innovative formats of Performance Support Tool that can also be used to supplement compliance courses. I hope you will find the article and the featured examples useful in creating an effective compliance roll-out for your organization. If you need any specific support on how you can enrich the compliance courses, do contact me. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

ICIET 2016 is supposed to be the largest technical event on Information and Education Technology in Los Angeles, U.S. in 2016. ICIET 2016 provides opportunities for the different areas delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration. We hope that the conference results constituted significant contribution to the knowledge in these up to date scientific field. The focus of the conference is to establish an effective platform for institutions and industries to share ideas and to present the works of scientists, engineers, educators and students from all over the world. The organizing committee of conference is pleased to invite prospective authors to submit their original manuscripts to ICIET 2016. ICIET 2016 Keynote Speakers Prof. Murali Krishnamurthi, Northern Illinois University, USA, is a member of the American Association for Engineering Education (ASEE) and the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network. In 2011, he received the Presidential Teaching Professor Award and the Deacon Davis Diversity Award at Northern Illinos University. Assoc. Prof. Mizuho Iinuma Ed.D, Department of Media Science, Tokyo University of Technology, Japan is a member of the Japan Association for International Education, Japan Society for Educational Technology, among others. She has earned the 74th Conference Award from Information Processing Society of Japan. The 2016 4th International Conference on Information and Education Technology (ICIET 2016) will be held in Los Angeles, U.S. during January 4-6, 2016.   This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Get Started With Responsive Course Design For Your mLearning Content  The world is going mobile. That means learners are using different sizes of devices to view online training content. To accommodate every size of smartphone and tablet for mLearning, you could multiply your course development time designing for each device size and then also testing, and tweaking, and testing each one again; or you could just design multi-device content. How? Meet Responsive Course Design™ (or RCD for short), a feature in the cloud-based authoring tool Lectora® Online. RCD is your new favorite coworker, here to save the day when you need to create mLearning quickly. Let’s answer a few questions to help you get started with Responsive Course Design: What’s the difference between traditional eLearning design and responsive course design? Traditional eLearning design uses fixed design, where you create static sized pages. This is the standard output from most authoring tools, but it’s not great for viewing on multiple devices. Responsive course design takes those desktop-sized pages that you’ve created, and adapts them for different device types. What does Responsive Course Design require from developers? Developers will want to be conscientious and create content that will be adapted well by RCD. For example, BranchTrack CEO Sergey Snegirev suggests designing content that can scroll, which fits nicely on a mobile device. He says "Thanks to Facebook and just about every website in the world, contemporary phone users love scrolling for new content, so make sure your course has long vertical pages and comfortable font sizes. Lectora RCD will take care of fitting your course width and making the rest scrollable". Can the Responsive Course Design course be customized? Absolutely. Developers probably won’t need to make many changes because Responsive Course Design saves them that time. But for example, some may want to tweak a page here and there, which they’re able to do to customize their course exactly the way they want. Rick Zanotti (Relate Corporation) interviewed John Blackmon, Trivantis CTO, about Responsive Course Design and noted "That’s pretty good. You don’t have to completely redesign the course, because you’re just tweaking certain pages. You may have a twenty-page course, but a lot of them already fit the pattern you want; you may only have to tweak two or three of them". What’s The Next Step?  Try Responsive Course Design yourself. Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Lectora Online today. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Apply The Dick And Carey Model In eLearning: 9 Steps For eLearning Professionals At its core, the Dick and Carey Model is all about the relationships between educational content, context, learning behavior, and instructional technique. Dick and Carey state that "Components such as the instructor, learners, materials, instructional activities, delivery system, and learning and performance environments interact with each other and work together to bring about the desired learner outcomes".  All of these vital components are addressed in their 9-step approach to Instructional Design. In this article, I’ll walk you through every step of the Dick and Carey Model, and I will explore how you can apply each into your eLearning design. Identify goals and objectives. The first step in the Dick and Carey Model is to clarify your goals and objectives. The learner must be aware of what they will be able to do when they complete the eLearning course, including the skills they will develop and the knowledge they will acquire. Make sure that you tie it to real world applications so that they know how the eLearning course can benefit them outside the virtual learning space. Complete instructional analysis. The next step is determining what your learners already know so that you can figure out how to fill the learning gap. This can be done through eLearning assessments, surveys, and interviews that focus on their current skill sets and knowledge base. For example, if the eLearning assessment reveals that a learner is unable to perform a specific on-the-job task, then you integrate the skills and information they need to master the task. Determine entry behaviors and learner characteristics. Conduct audience research to determine your learner’s behaviors, traits, personal preferences, and motivation factors, such as what has prompted them to enroll. Focus on characteristics that pertain directly to the goals and objectives for your eLearning course. This helps you to narrow down the specific online content that is vital for your eLearning course, rather than covering information that they have already acquired. You can identify all of the ideas and concepts that you should include to provide a comprehensive and personalized eLearning experience. Write performance objectives. In addition to the learning goals, you must also develop performance objectives that clearly describe the task or process that must be mastered, as well as criteria that you are going to gauge learner progress. The performance objectives must also include the specific conditions in which the task or skill will be carried out, such as observing your audience on-the-job or in a particular real-world setting. Develop criterion-referenced eLearning assessments. No eLearning strategy is complete without an effective online assessment plan. This involves finding the ideal eLearning assessment type for your learners, such as the multiple-choice questions or interactive scenarios, as well as the grading rubric and criteria. Though formative and/or summative eLearning assessment, you can also determine if the instructional strategy, itself, is effective and reveal the weaknesses and strengths of the online activities and exercises of the eLearning course. Develop the instructional eLearning strategy. Now that you’ve done all of the research and developed your objectives and goals, it is time to create a sound instructional eLearning strategy for your audience. You should take into consideration the learning theories that are best suited for your subject matter and learner needs, based on which you will develop the eLearning activities that properly convey the desired information to your learners. Choose learning materials and online activities. Select each of the learning materials, tools, and online exercises that serve the learning goals and objectives. This also involves eLearning content creation, such as online tutorials, branching scenarios, and text and multimedia-based instructional aids. You should also consider the preferences of your learners when choosing your online materials, and include a wide range of eLearning activities to appeal to a wider audience. Carry out formative evaluation. This takes place even before you unveil your eLearning course to the public. It often involves focus groups or the release of beta versions that help to iron out any issues prior to eLearning course deployment. If you find any weak areas in the eLearning course, now is the time to fix them and ensure that every element is as effective as possible. This may require a major rewrite of your eLearning content or even revamping your online activities, if necessary. Keep in mind that it’s better to remedy the problems now, rather than risking your brand image with a flawed eLearning course later on. Carry out summative evaluation. The last step is assessing whether your eLearning course actually achieves the desired outcome. This can only truly be determined through learner post-assessments, such as tests at the end of the lesson, and performance-based online exams, like observing a learner on-the-job or examining business statistics. An example of this would be to check customer satisfaction scores to discover if a customer service eLearning course had the desired effect. An important part of the process that is often overlooked is taking action once you gather your data. Applying the Dick and Carey Model in eLearning helps you overcome this issue. Keep in mind that your eLearning strategy should be adaptable and evolve with the needs of your learners. If something is not working effectively, then do not hesitant to make changes when necessary. Use these tips to ensure that you cover each step of the instructional design process and formulate a plan that will truly benefit your online learners. Also want to learn about other models you may consider for your next eLearning course? Read the article Applying Gagné's 9 Events Of Instruction In eLearning to discover how to apply the 9 Events of Instruction introduced by Gagné, in order to create effective and comprehensive eLearning experiences. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

What Teachers Find Attractive In Blended Learning  Teaching is really a tough job: Every teacher has to take the big responsibility of educating many students at the same time and budget cuts have made things more complicated. On the other hand, teachers are also getting pressure from their school administrators to ensure personalize learning so their students’ achievements can be boosted. Unfortunately, most of the teachers don’t have proper tools to personalize learning. The good news is that most schools have now realized the importance of blended learning, which has made things much easier not just for the teachers but also for the students who love to study in an interactive learning environment. Teachers find blended learning an ideal option and there is a variety of reasons behind it. In this article I am going to discuss some of most common reasons why blended learning has become so much popular these days: Easy management of classroom activities. When students are being taught, they are already ready to learn the lesson because they work in small groups, which lets them go through the right kind of lesson at the right time of the day. Every school administration tries to achieve excellence in everything they do in years to come and blended learning is what allows them to incorporate dynamic scheduling and right policies based on competency. Effective strategies make things easier not just for school administration but also for teachers who find it much easier to manage small groups in their own convenience. Easy implementation of learning strategies. You can’t teach every student in the same way because every one of them learns things differently and there might be a variety of reasons behind it. However, blended learning enables teachers to implement different types of learning strategies as per the need of their students such as match developmental courses, tutorials, instructional videos, voice over text, fun games, and a variety of other features. Personalized and engaging content will greatly help kids learn even the most complicated topics. In this way, every kid gets equal opportunities to improve his/her skills and knowledge base. Effective use of classroom time. Many schools have made it essential for students to spend 1-2 hours every day on building their online skills and this technique has actually given more flexibility to teachers who can now have more of their class time for spending in critical thinking and most importantly classroom problem solving issues. Teachers can create an instructional resources playlist and send it to students to go through it at home, which means that when the content is already delivered to them, the rest of their classroom time can be used for solving problems. Proper progress monitoring system. Teachers can assign their students subject-based digital games as their homework assignment and the next morning they can overview the dashboard to see their achievements. Students can easily get instant feedback on completion of their assignments and, on the other hand, teachers can have easy access to an evidence-based gradebook. This transformation of curriculum from print to digital version will also get digital dashboards and embedded assessments into use and it will enable teachers to monitor every student’s progress more easily. Use of adaptive testing systems. There are various adaptive testing systems that can quickly give careful assessment on overall progress of every student. One of the popular options is NWEA which claims to provide you educational assessments that you can easily trust. NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tool can create a fully personalized assessment result. In addition to the MAP tool, you can also use the Skill Navigator tool and various other features to figure out the overall learning growth of your school kids. Ability to work remotely. One of the greatest advantages of blended learning is that the teachers can also work remotely. For example, if you are an English teacher living in New York City, you can teach online to those students who are living in North Carolina and can’t attend your classes in person. In fact, you can work from everywhere you want which will surely get you a big opportunity to generate a source of income through online channels. Blended learning has actually made difficult jobs much easier. Opportunity to add earning. A big attraction that many teachers see in blended learning is the opportunity to earn more than by following the traditional ways of teaching. Teachers of Dissertation Help Love have new roles to perform and new patterns to follow, which don’t just build their confidence but also improve their lifestyle and the ability to get advantage of extended learning, which helps them add to their earning resources. In many states, teachers don’t get paid a sufficient amount of money against the services they render to the schools. However, increasing popularity of blended and extended systems has brought them better opportunities. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Free Webinar: Millennials, E-learning, And The Evolving Workplace 2015 marks the year that the "millennial" became not only the largest generation in the workforce, but the largest living generation. This shift has spurred the release of a multitude of reports on differences in workplace habits, technology use and buying power of what appears to be a very hands-on, connected, and collaborative population. Simultaneously, we are watching the equally large population of "Baby Boomers" retire from business and leadership roles. This confluence of factors is creating a leadership gap in the workplace, resulting in young leaders being thrust into managerial roles with little to no preparation. A lack of innovative options for delivering training to this population seems to keep us stuck force-fitting traditional solutions rather than evolving our approach. Please join University of California, Irvine Extension in welcoming 20-year veteran of e-learning and product development for fast-growing organizations, Mary Keenan, in discussing how to re-think the way we deliver learning to the dominant and most analyzed population in recent history. This webinar will include pre-registration advisement for individuals interested in UCI Extension's fully online E-Learning Instructional Design Certificate Program. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Traditional Learning Management Systems And Common Concerns About Them  From a pedagogical point of view, we may argue that some of the Learning Management Systems (LMSs) place the storage and delivery of content in the center rather than learners and effective learning. Furthermore, they dictate certain teaching strategies mainly in the form of knowledge transfer. Teachers and trainers are restricted with the features available in an Learning Management System, which makes learning much less effective. On the contrary, learning is a much more complex and a dynamic process in which teachers need to be given the chance to be flexible enough with the mode of instruction, interaction, and assessment strategies in online and blended learning environments. From this point of view, we can say that adapting the system to fit the instruction is pedagogically more sound than modifying the instruction to fit the affordances of the tool. When the Learning Management System dictates how learning and teaching take place with no room for flexibility, effective learning is more likely to fall through the cracks. This is one of the common concerns in some education circles and seems to be partly true especially for some traditional Learning Management Systems built around the idea of one-size-fits-all. Is The Future Of Learning Management Systems Promising? Although it is a fact that learning in the digital age is so distributed and learner-pulled that it should not be confined to a certain system, a counter-argument can be made in favor of Learning Management Systems based on recent developments. We observe that Learning Management System are getting more and more sophisticated as the technology advances. For instance, data-science is becoming an integral part of Learning Management Systems, and learner analytics are utilized in a way that helps learners experience a more personalized learning. For instances, some Learning Management Systems already report if a student has mastered the target objective based on the student's performance on assignments, tests, and activities, and recommend a specific learning plan for the student. This helps each student meet the learning objectives in a personalized way. The summative assessment features such as multiple-choice tests produced at the end of a course are all currently available in Learning Management Systems. However, formative assessment which is crucial for individualizing learning and intervening at the right time before a course ends is what matters for enhanced learning. It is promising to see that modern Learning Management Systems offer teachers the opportunity to evaluate their students' understanding at the right time with the right intervention plan. There is also research on whether computers can detect the emotional state of students by examining their facial expressions while dealing with math problems. The researchers have found support that computer programs are able to determine the students’ level of perceived difficulty of a given task and that it is possible to adapt the learning materials based on their affective state. Given the fact that emotions play a crucial role in learning, these adaptive learning systems seem to have the potential to improve the quality of learning and to change our view of Learning Management Systems in a positive way. Conclusion It seems that one-size-fits-all methods are increasingly being abandoned and it is easy to predict that we will be using even more sophisticated systems in the near future. Perhaps, what we call Learning Management System now will evolve into completely different learning spaces which are much more intelligent and learner-centered. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.