LMS with powerful auditing tool

Hi Jenny,

Thanks for posting this. As you probably know, it's the ability to audit/grade external content and provide feedback on it that is the challenging part of your specification.

Curious to see what the experts here can provide insight on. In the meantime, you may want to check out the LMSs geared towards the educational/college market.  Typically they have more capabilities around external work product submissions.

Can you give an example? Do you mean something like crediting certification courses from say a professional organization (like ATD)? Do you want that integrated automatically into the LMS?

An example that hopefully makes sense:
A member completes 3 learning events and has to ensure these are captured
under their learning profile for the year to meet their annual professional
development hours which is then audited by our professional association.

1. One course is a 3 hour eLearning course

1. We would want to be able to allow them to register and take the
course on the site (basic LMS with eCommerce)
2. Completion data be automatically entered as part of their
professional development hours in their learning profile

- Be able to create custom fields (category/subcategory/hours earned)
for the course

2. One webinar hosted on the LMS

1. We would want to be able to allow them to view the webinar live or watch
pre-recorded session

2.Completion data be automatically entered as part of their professional
development hours in their learning profile

- Be able to create custom fields (category/subcategory/hours earned)
for the course

3. One workshop not listed on the LMS

1. All member to fill out an online form to include all the information we
need to later audit their entry (date, category, subcategory, supporting
documents, etc.)

We would like to system to be able to the following for auditing purposes:

- Be able to then consolidate their learning data into these custom
fields mentioned about (category/subcategory/hours etc.)
- Be able to provide an overall pass or fail based on the consolidated
data for the year

Our professional association would then have the ability to go into the
members learning profile and audit their entries to see if they meet the
annual requirements, provide feedback to the member for each entry and then
provide an audit report pulling all the feedback together into a report
that is then emailed to the member. We would also be wanting to generate
various reports based on the number of hours they submit/ location/ etc.

I am not sure if we would get all of these in one system, I am at a bit of
a loss finding something that will do it all!

Hello Jennie, 

Most LMS can accommodate what you are attempting to do, however, the custom fields will need to be identified in the reports the systems produce.  You would like to have a system that will provide Ad Hoc Reports as well as Standard Reports.  You could have the Professional Program setup as a curriculum in the LMS and push it to each persons Learning Plan with requirements and due dates.  A live Webinar could be viewed through the LMS, however, you need to consider bandwidth, however any recordings can be wrapped in Articulate or Storyline and placed into the LMS for future viewing.  Once the student has completed the mandatory curriculum the completion is recorded on their transcript within the system.  As for feedback the auditors could use a Survey in the LMS to create a feedback form they could email to the student directly from the LMS.  Also, the LMS is a web-based product and can be housed outside of the organizations firewall to permit students to take courses on their personal computers.   You may contact me if you would like to discuss this further, shopping for an LMS can be challenging. 

Hi Cheryl,

I think part of the OPs challenge was being able to extract and review key data from various off line activities. For example.... X number of learning hours on category A and subcategory B, C or D to determine how the offline activity plays into certification requirements.

I'm sure there are partial work-arounds (ie requiring entry into SCORM wrapped shell courses to house that data), but this kind of capability is not standard in most LMSs I've implemented. Do you have an example for the OP of an LMS that might handle this particularly well?

blackboard has a lot of customisable options but expensive

Thanks I will look into that one.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Jenny Brown MEd, CPHI(C)
Education Specialist
Environmental Public Health
Alberta Health Services
10101 Southport Rd SW
Calgary, AB T2W 3N2

587-774-5198 Website

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Hi Bob,

I can only think of a few at the moment, Cornerstone, Meridian, and SuccessFactors.  Although the activities are offline they may be able to capture that data.  With any LMS you need to discuss with the vendor your specific needs so they can determine whether the option already available or will it be a custom build.  Its still a reporting issue.  I hope that helps. 

I would go down the Wordpress LMS route.