A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, materials, or learning and development programs. The learning management system concept emerged directly from e-Learning. Learning management systems make up the largest segment of the learning system market. The first introduction of the LMS was in the late 1990s. LMSs have been adopted by almost all higher education institutions in the English-speaking world. Learning management systems have experienced a massive growth in usage because of the emphasis on remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning management systems were designed to identify training and learning gaps using analytics and reporting. LMSs are focused on online learning delivery but also support a range of uses, serving as a platform for online content, including both asynchronous and synchronous courses. In the higher education space, an LMS may offer classroom management for instructor-led training or a flipped classroom. Modern LMSs include intelligent algorithms to make automated recommendations for courses based on a user's skill profile as well as extract metadata from learning materials to make such recommendations even more accurate.
Purpose An LMS delivers and manages all types of content, including videos, courses, workshops, and documents. In the education and higher education markets, an LMS will include a variety of functionality similar to corporate LMSs, with features such as rubrics, teacher- and instructor-facilitated learning, a discussion board, and often a syllabus. A syllabus is rarely a feature in the corporate LMS, although courses may start with a heading-level index to give learners an overview of topics covered.
History Several historical phases of distance education preceded the development of the LMS.
Correspondence teaching The first known document of correspondence teaching dates back to 1723, through the advertisement in the Boston Gazette of Caleb Phillips, professor of shorthand, offering teaching materials and tutorials. The first testimony of a bi-directional communication organized correspondence course comes from England, in 1840, when Isaac Pitman initiated a shorthand course, wherein he sent a passage of the Bible to students, who would send it back in full transcription. The success of the course led to the founding of the phonographic correspondence society in 1843. The pioneering milestone in distance language teaching was in 1856 by Charles Toussaint and Gustav Langenscheidt, who began the first European institution of distance learning. This is the first known instance of the use of materials for independent language study.
Multimedia teaching: The emergence and development of the distance learning idea The concept of e-learning began to develop in the early 20th century, marked by the emergence of audio-video communication systems for remote teaching. In 1909, E.M. Forster published his story 'The Machine Stops' and explained the benefits of using audio communication to deliver lectures to remote audiences. In 1924, Sidney L. Pressey developed the first teaching machine, which offered multiple types of practical exercises and question formats. Nine years later, University of Alberta Professor M.E. Zerte transformed this machine into a problem cylinder capable of comparing problems and solutions. This, in a sense, was "multimedia" because it used several media formats to reach students and deliver instruction. Later, printed materials would be joined by telephone, radio broadcasts, TV broadcasts, audio, and videotapes. The earliest networked learning system was the Plato Learning Management system (PLM) developed in the 1970s by Control Data Corporation.
Telematic teaching In the 1980s, modern telecommunications started to be used in education. Computers became prominent in the daily operations of higher education institutions and as instruments for student learning. Computer-aided teaching aimed to integrate technical and educational means. The trend then shifted to video communication, as a result of which University of Houston decided to hold telecast classes to their students for approximately 13–15 hours a week. The classes took place in 1953, while in 1956 Robin McKinnon Wood and Gordon Pask released the first adaptive teaching system for corporate environments, SAKI. The idea of automating teaching operations also inspired the University of Illinois experts to develop their Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations (PLATO), which enabled users to exchange content regardless of their location. In the period between 1970 and 1980, educational venues were rapidly considering the idea of computerizing courses, including the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute from California, which introduced the first accredited online-taught degree.
Teaching through the internet: The appearance of the first LMS The history of the application of computers to education is filled with broadly descriptive terms such as computer-managed instruction (CMI), and integrated learning systems (ILS), computer-based instruction (CBI), computer-assisted instruction (CAI), and computer-assisted learning (CAL). These terms describe drill-and-practice programs, more sophisticated tutorials, and more individualized instruction, respectively. The term is currently used to describe several different educational computer applications. FirstClass by SoftArc, used by the United Kingdom's Open University in the 1990s and 2000s to deliver online learning across Europe, was one of the earliest internet-based LMSs. The first fully featured Learning Management System (LMS) was called EKKO, developed and released by Norway's NKI Distance Education Network in 1991. Three years later, New Brunswick's NB Learning Network presented a similar system designed for DOS-based teaching, and devoted exclusively to business learners.
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