An LMS Platform: Convenient Learning Management for Tutors

By TalkEn.Cloud Author Team

Even if you speak English very well, that does not guarantee you a career as a successful tutor. To become a tutor, you need to develop or buy a modern, proven English course program for your students, and choose convenient platforms for communicating with them, creating homework and teaching online lessons. And that is not all: every day you will have to spend time analyzing each student’s progress, drawing up a lesson schedule and letting students know about it.

Fortunately, most of these tasks are already automated with LMS platforms. These are cloud programs that host learning materials and let teachers run online lessons. Practice shows that such platforms can save up to 20% of a foreign language teacher’s working time.

In this article we explain in detail what an LMS is, what goals a tutor can achieve with it and why schoolchildren enjoy working with such programs so much.

Contents

1. What a learning management system (LMS) is
2. Goals tutors achieve with an LMS
2.1. More time for lessons, not for preparing them
2.2. Lower costs for developing curricula
2.3. Teaching from anywhere in the world
2.4. Quick homework checking
2.5. Lessons that bring knowledge and inspiration, not fatigue
3. LMS e-learning: why students love online learning platforms
4. LMS platforms and their types

What a learning management system (LMS) is

Roughly speaking, it is a space on the internet where you can teach English or another subject very conveniently. An LMS platform includes a teacher’s account where they can upload their own teaching materials, draw up a lesson schedule, create student profiles, put students into groups and teach lessons by video call. LMS platforms can also host ready-made interactive textbooks that let students not only study vocabulary and grammar theory but also watch interesting topical videos, listen to the correct pronunciation of words, have fun with quizzes and take tests.

The main advantage of LMS e-learning systems is that they free the teacher and students from having to use lots of different resources, textbooks and handouts. All the necessary information is on the LMS platform, and you need only one link to access it.

Goals tutors achieve with an LMS

LMS platforms are in high demand among today’s tutors who teach online. What is more, such systems often serve as the basis for a full language school, because they make it very convenient to share original learning materials without fear of them being stolen and made publicly available. LMSs have become just as valuable for public educational institutions, which also had to give up traditional face-to-face learning in favor of online lessons. Read on to learn more about the goals a learning management system can help a tutor or teacher achieve.

An LMS platform makes interaction between a tutor and students easier

More time for lessons, not for preparing them

If you want to build a successful career as an English tutor, choose a platform with LMS features that contains ready-made lessons. This way you will not have to spend time looking for interesting, relevant materials that match your students’ level and help improve and expand their knowledge. They have already been created and uploaded to the LMS for your convenience. With an LMS platform, preparing for a lesson can take up to 10 minutes, spent on reviewing and choosing ready-made materials.

Lower costs for developing curricula

A big difficulty for many beginner tutors is developing their own course for teaching English. The thing is, lessons and programs are usually developed not by teachers but by methodologists. So beginners who plan to teach English have to buy courses for different levels or learn the hard way.

An LMS platform with ready-made interactive textbooks solves the problem of finding and testing curricula. A teacher will find all the necessary materials on the site, perfectly arranged so that students gradually master new topics while reviewing the ones they have covered. Most importantly, the materials and program on the LMS platform have already been tested by other teachers.

Teaching from anywhere in the world

If you still do not quite understand what an LMS platform is, one way to explain it is that it is your whole working toolkit gathered on one website. Wherever you are, you will have access to your learning materials in cloud storage, even if your computer or laptop is not at hand and you have to go to a coworking space. The LMS platform also has a built-in program for one-to-one and group video calls, so you do not have to remember dozens of passwords for different apps.

An LMS platform makes it convenient to teach English with the flipped classroom approach

Quick homework checking

The program lets a tutor send homework to students and check it quickly, and an LMS platform also lets you create tests with automatic checking. It is very important that the teacher can see which questions the student answered correctly and which they did not, to understand exactly where the knowledge gap is. Besides tests, the LMS platform has extra homework included in the interactive textbooks.

Lessons that bring knowledge and inspiration, not fatigue

People remember new information much faster when they feel genuine interest in the process. That is why interactive textbooks for LMS platforms are designed to interest students, let them show knowledge from other areas of life (for example, about the plot or cast of a popular film) and learn something useful besides new English words and grammar rules. This gives another answer to the question of what an LMS is: a radically new approach to teaching foreign languages that makes learning interesting and inspiring.

LMS e-learning: why students love online learning platforms

Today’s schoolchildren, who love scrolling through short TikTok videos or watching interesting YouTube podcasts, are quite hard to interest in ordinary English lessons. That is why a course on an LMS platform is built around students’ habits: in lessons they can watch lots of relevant videos, infographics and other interactive materials that help them learn English, sometimes without even noticing. Here are a few more reasons why schoolchildren like LMS platforms.

A platform with full LMS features contains the tools today’s tutor needs

• Just one link to access the lesson and all materials. At the start of working with a tutor, a student may get confused about which programs to open, where to sign in and where the lesson schedule is, so parents have to monitor the learning process. A learning management system is just one link that opens access to lessons, textbooks and the personal account.
• A convenient calendar that helps you not miss a lesson. A modern LMS platform is a personal secretary that will not let you forget about your studies and get in trouble with your mom for a missed lesson.
• Hearing the correct pronunciation of words. By clicking on any word in the interactive textbook on the LMS platform, the student sees its definition, hears the correct pronunciation and can repeat it to start sounding like a native English speaker.
• Interesting extra learning materials. Schoolchildren find it hard to learn dozens of confusing grammar rules and exceptions that defy logical explanation. To make this easier, teachers usually develop interactive tables and diagrams, which the LMS platform keeps always at hand.
• Checking your own knowledge. As we mentioned above, a learning management system has a feature for creating tests. So after each lesson, schoolchildren can take mini-tests created by the teacher to understand their level and identify weak spots.
• Interactive homework. It is interesting and easy to do and takes less time than traditional exercises in a notebook, which makes the online LMS platform even more attractive.
• Constant access to the interactive textbook for reviewing topics. The teacher gives students access to the whole textbook, which they can use at any time. What is more, it lets you teach with the flipped classroom approach: students go through the theory in textbooks on the LMS platform at home, and in the lesson with the tutor they practice skills such as speaking, listening and correct pronunciation.

As a result, students of a tutor who uses an LMS platform usually stay with them longer. After all, if working together brings noticeable results, why change teachers?

LMS platforms and their types

If you want to connect to LMS e-learning, you should know that there are two main types of such learning platforms:

• With interactive textbooks. This is an LMS platform that already has ready-made learning materials the tutor can use. If needed and desired, they can also upload their own teaching materials to the system.
• Without learning materials. This is just a platform the tutor can use to organize video lessons, create schedules and student groups, and add their own materials.

The only advantage of an LMS platform without learning materials is the lower cost of access. However, given the potential time savings a tutor gets from an LMS, the higher cost of access to interactive textbooks always pays off.

We hope you now understand well what an LMS is, how it can help you, what professional goals it can help you achieve and why students will stay with you until they fully master English up to Advanced level. All that is left is to choose the best LMS platform, set it up for your needs, create profiles for each of your students and start teaching. Note that we have described far from all the features of an online LMS platform, so do not waste time: connect to one now and test all its advantages.

Read also

• An LMS for Tutors and Language Schools: How to Save Time
• An LMS for Tutors and Language Schools
• Websites for Online Tutors: Features, Pros and Cons