What you need to know about being an LMS administrator

Have you moved into a role which requires you to be an LMS administrator?

It’s important for organizations to have a dedicated person in charge of managing and monitoring their Learning Management System. Your LMS can be used to improve business operations, workplace processes and company culture – and as an LMS administrator, you hold the keys to the success of your LMS.

Here’s what you need to know about being an LMS administrator, to help you feel more comfortable and confident in your new role. For managers and leaders, this article will also highlight the skills you should look for in an LMS admin, and how their job duties can help improve your business.

Responsibilities of an LMS Administrator

Learning management systems can be used successfully for a number of different reasons. They can be used to onboard new hires, enrol learners into eLearning courses, and monitor and track professional development. They can also be used as communication and collaboration platforms, to help improve organizational culture.

For your LMS to work well for your business, an LMS administrator must be able to take care of the everyday operations of the system, for administration, documentation, reporting, and creation of training programs. If you’re an LMS admin, you should also work to establish a positive working relationship between technical support and the program manager.

Kamy Anderson, expert in learning management system and eLearning authoring tools, divides the key responsibilities of an LMS admin into three categories:

• Technical duties – defining user roles, creating learning courses, building custom certification, providing feedback for learners.
• Collaboration duties – Participate in the process of information exchange, assist in the process of the review creation, consult with other teams to implement the best learning practices.
• Staff training duties – create training courses on a regular basis, keep track of freshly uploaded relevant courses, spot and resolve issues in courses, help learners with any issues.

Creating an Online Course

Let’s look closer at the technical duty of creating online learning courses, because it’s one of the most important duties of the LMS admin. Many administrators are given the task to create online courses either within the LMS or through an authoring tool that is then uploaded into the system.

If you’re new to creating eLearning courses this could appear as a pretty daunting challenge. But we’re here to help you out with that too. We recently published a handy eLearning course design checklist, to help you feel confident in designing online courses in the best way possible for your audience. This comprehensive design checklist will ensure you’re covering important aspects of eLearning design throughout the process – such as accessibility, navigation, graphics, multimedia and assessments.

You can also read our article on what makes a good online course design, in terms of the psychology behind the design process. This will give you a more in-depth discussion of online course design, helping you to connect more closely with your learners and their needs.

Taking the time to learn more about creating online courses will help you to provide your organization with user-friendly, successful, effective eLearning courses.

Skills of a Good LMS Administrator

With so many duties and responsibilities, an LMS admin needs to have strong skills in a number of different areas.

First up, you obviously need to have the technical computer skills to manage the Learning Management System, and the ability to learn systems and processes quickly.

You’ll also need to be an effective communicator, with the interpersonal skills to talk to people from business units across the organization – face-to-face, in email and over the phone. Being organized, efficient and able to manage your own workload is essential for LMS admin. And having a strong eye for detail will be an advantage, to both minimize and recognize errors in the LMS.

Anderson adds to this list, believing that a good LMS administrator needs to have “a dedicated approach and perfect understanding of your organization’s policy and goals when it comes to learning” and be 100% “familiar with the compliance requirements in your business sphere.”

As you can see, the role of LMS administrator is very important for an organization's learning processes, and the professional development of its employees. With your role, you have the ability to make a very positive impact on company culture and the people who work within the organization. Good luck in your exciting new role!