A learning management system (LMS) is a powerful tool that helps you streamline teaching activities and offer students a personalized learning experience. One of the main capabilities that enable such systems is automation.
Although the sole name ‘’automation’’ might be intimidating if you’re the non-tech-savvy type, don’t worry. Most LMSs are intuitive, so using automation comes easily to more and more educators.
Automation features allow you to trigger specific actions in the platform based on students’ progress. For example, when a student finishes a class, you can automatically award them a certificate of completion and send them a congratulations message. If new students join your class, you can send them welcome messages and enroll them in different classes.
Managing accounts, creating learning paths, games, or assessing students also rely heavily on automation. Moreover, you can personalize students’ access to classes and the content they see according to their level of understanding.
There are myriad things you can achieve with automation. They all help you save time, customize and optimize your teaching. Learn how to make the most of your LMS automation features.
How do LMS automation features work?
Automation sounds complicated but it isn’t. You choose to what extent you want to use your LMS automation features. Naturally, you are also free to select the features you want to use first and ignore the ones you’re not yet ready for.
If you’re curious to learn how automation works, the answer is simple. The whole system relies on if-then statements. If a condition is met, the system recognizes it. Then, it triggers an action in response. For example, once a student completes an assignment, they can automatically get an award and a notification that signals they’ve moved on to the next lesson.
All the features are pre-configured. So, don’t worry about dealing with complicated settings. You have all the options at hand. All you have to do is select the actions and triggers and let the platform do the rest.
Why use an LMS to automate teaching tasks?
A reliable LMS helps you create engaging content for your students. It also enables you to streamline the entire teaching process.
LMSs offer a complete solution for content delivery, student assessment, student-teacher and group communication. The automation features play an important role in all these activities. Much of what you would normally do manually (e.g. sending messages to each student) can be automated. Moreover, this feature allows you to create a more dynamic and personalized learning experience.
The bottom line is that you gain more time to invest in building relationships with your students or creating more engaging materials for your classes. In the end, edtech is also here to support teachers’ work-life balance.
How can LMS automation features help you?
Using these automation features in conjunction is the best way to make the most of your LMS, so here are a few common processes that are commonly automated:
Automate grading
Teachers usually spend hours per month just grading student work. This process takes so much time, and it can easily be done by your LMS. For example, the platform checks true or false or multiple-choice quizzes with zero human intervention.
You just have to add the questions and answers, mark each correct answer, and the LMS will automatically calculate students’ grades after they complete the quiz. Then, it will also show them the score and a breakdown of their correct and incorrect answers.
You also get to choose how many times students can answer a question by setting the number of attempts. Furthermore, you can set the minimum score needed to pass a test.
After successfully completing an assignment or a class, students will automatically receive a certificate of completion. To create these certificates, most LMSs offer ready-made forms you simply have to customize.
Read more: Is an LMS the best grading companion for teachers?
Use adaptive learning
Students have their own learning pace. LMS automation allows you to adapt to each person’s rhythm effortlessly. Thus, you avoid overwhelming students with too-complicated content. Conversely, students who advance faster won’t get bored. They will see more advanced content as they make progress.
Automation enables you to add rules to a class or assignment based on student progress. For instance, if a student achieves a 90 percent score on a test, you can further challenge them by unlocking a more challenging assignment.
On the contrary, students who barely get a 50 percent score need more help. Therefore, you can direct them to repeat certain sections of your class. They can also unlock simpler quizzes to help them retain information and gain more confidence.
This feature is called adaptive learning and it helps boost student performance through dynamic content. Each student will see and use the content based on their mastery level within the platform.
It’s up to you to create personalized learning paths for your students. Not all of them will arrive at the same level simultaneously. Simultaneously, expecting them to meet the same standard at the same time is not efficient.
Leverage gamification
Gamification is one of the most popular e-learning features. No matter what age they are, most students love games. It’s easier to retain information in the long term if the learning experience is immersive and enjoyable. This is precisely what you achieve while teaching and assessing students through gamification.
To leverage the maximum potential of games, make them challenging. You can do this by automatically awarding points, prizes, or badges once a student passes a level or finishes the game. This will boost their engagement, commitment, and ambition. Furthermore, it will help them retain information more easily.
You get to define the rules of the game and decide when to offer students awards. Make the game as simple or as complex as you want and add awards and badges accordingly. Besides in-game notifications such as pop-ups, students can also receive email messages when they gain a new badge or point. All of this is possible through automation.
Streamline communication
There are countless reasons why you need to keep in touch with parents and students. Doing this by phone or email can be tedious. You can rely on your LMS and its automated messaging capabilities to speed up your work.
Once students have an LMS account, you can send them all sorts of canned messages. You can easily keep them up-to-date, from class enrollment notifications to class completion certificates and assignment completion reminders.
Furthermore, you can use automation to streamline your communication with parents. For example, they can get notifications when their children complete a new assignment.
Also, you can ask students to provide feedback directly within your LMS by setting rules for automated review requests. At the end of each class, you can find out what students liked/disliked about it without wasting class time on this.
Facilitate account management
Automation can also ease your student account management tasks. For example, if a new student is added to the platform, you can automatically enroll them in a class.
For new students, you can create specific learning paths. This personalized learning strategy allows you to gradually walk the student through specific classes and assignments based on their knowledge and interests.
Upon completing a class or a learning path, students can immediately access other paths and classes based on the rules you set for their accounts. It all happens by default once you add the settings. Speaking of which, don’t worry, as there are guides and tutorials to help you make the most of automation and other features.
Wrapping up
You reach plenty of goals through LMS automation, from personalizing student learning experiences to grading assignments or sending notifications. Automation comes with full flexibility, and you can use it however you like or need.
In today’s fast-paced world, teachers need to rely on technology to ease their job. Put repetitive teaching tasks on autopilot by leveraging LMS automation features. You’ll enjoy the benefits of working smarter, not harder.
