In the previous episode of the Disruptors & Innovators podcast, we discussed the first five of our list of the Top 10 Must-Have Features of a Continuing Education LMS. This conversation is important because companies in the advanced training space expect a fair and versatile CE program with advanced capabilities beyond that of the standard learning management system.
But what are those bells and whistles, exactly? We recently posted the first five: e-commerce, multi-seat registration, video, supporting multiple content standards, and tests and proctoring. Below are the next five.
6. Certification — Continuing education businesses that offer certification or licensure must be able to track course completion to legally provide certification. A CE LMS must be able to track, deliver, and appropriately time the certifications. In this space, it’s critical to sustain your credibility. Certifications reinforce your standing with governing bodies. The best part about DigitalChalk certifications is that you can fully customize what appears on that certificate for the student’s record and then automate the dates that appear based on completion.
7. IP Protection — As you deliver continuing education, you want to protect your content and have safe, efficient version control. After all, it’s your intellectual property. IP protection ensures you maintain control of the content regardless of who you distribute it to. All of that is taken care of within our platform in that once you upload the content, you have complete visibility of its usage. We track exactly who is accessing it and when they’ve accessed it. And boundaries are set on their access. On top of that, Content Fortress allows you to distribute the content to customers even if they prefer to use a completely different LMS to run the program. You’re still protected no matter what.
8. Integrations — The ability to integrate is tremendously important for most SaaS products. A true continuing education platform must seamlessly interact with everything from Salesforce, to marketing automation tools, HR platforms, and more. Our Zapier integration offers our clients the ability to connect DigitalChalk to thousands of their favorite apps.
9. Automation of notifications, registrations, and webhooks — Webhooks and notifications allow you to monitor certain events that happened within DigitalChalk and get alerted to those events. So if something happens, such as creating a new user, registering a new course, assigning a new grade, etc., you are always aware of what goes on in the platform.
10. Support — Obviously, support is critically important for any continuing education platform. Is it a feature like the others? No. But it’s a capability that your CE LMS provider or vendor absolutely must bring to the table and be very good at. Support is part of our DNA. We want our clients to have world-class support through email, phone, online, and any other channel during business hours. And the best part is that we don’t have charges for that support. It’s part of the program because we recognize how important it is to work with a human being on any challenge.