Will Online Video Kill Learning Management Systems? We Sure Don’t Think So

“While they may include internal video sharing and some knowledge management, [Learning Management Systems] were not designed to help employees track down new content available somewhere on the internet. And they were not built to handle the volume of video training, which is becoming a key tool for learning.” – Diginomica

“Live/video conferencing tops the list of most desired features lacking in current LMSs.” – Capterra

To hear critics and analysts discuss the future of learning management systems, you might think that the technology was failing to accommodate one of the Web’s most beloved sources of content consumption: online video.

At Rievent, we find that puzzling. Online video, after all, is huge. On the consumer side, people spend more time watching videos online than they spend using social media. Users have been comfortable with the medium for many years now, so it stands to reason that education providers would already be looking at video as a go-to content delivery format.

Except that they aren’t. And lagging learning management system innovation – to our utter surprise – may very well be to blame.

Many learning management systems lack video support

According to a recent Capterra survey of LMS users, video is the single most desired feature that education providers cannot use in their existing LMSs. It’s such a wanted feature, in fact, that Diginomica is suggesting that demand for video-based educational content may very well “kill” the LMS as we know it. Organizations, they reason, might be forced to use other platforms to deliver video content to learners.

We don’t think that’s likely, though. For one thing, the LMS market is a $2.5 billion industry that’s growing every year, and that’s just on the corporate side alone. What’s more, video has already made its way to the LMS.

Yes, you heard us right. There are learning management systems that support video. We know this because continuing education providers have been adding video content to the Rievent Platform for years.

Getting video into the LMS

MP4 is the video format you’re using when you watch a YouTube or Vimeo video or stream a movie on iTunes. It’s supported by every modern browser, and there’s absolutely no reason why a modern LMS shouldn’t support it as well.

For example, consider a continuing medical education provider who wants to add a video to the Rievent Platform. You just drag the file to the provider interface or locate the file on your hard drive and upload it:

In this case, the content is hosted within the LMS itself. But what if you already have video content that’s hosted elsewhere on the Web? As long as the content is accessible from a URL – and it almost always will – you can just add the link and the video will appear as part of an associated activity:

 

It works in continuing professional education, but…

We realize that many organizations using an LMS are not continuing education providers, and it may very well be that LMSs designed for other verticals, by and large, do not or cannot support video content at this time. But when it comes to CE, providers are already using platforms that support video content. It’s something they expect!

In any case, the idea that a lack of video support spells doom for LMSs simply doesn’t add up. As we’ve just demonstrated, learning management applications can support videos in the most common delivery formats.

Online video is here to stay. It’s doing just fine in the LMS, too.