Learning Management System Compliance

A very common scenario that learning management system (LMS) sellers go through is, “A potential client reaches at their exhibition booth and enquires, “Is your LMS complies with regulatory standards?”

The answer is not very simple.

The concern with compliance is that it is driven by laws & regulations. In order for the company to stay compliant, they might have to undergo specific training, educate the employees about that, and undergo a lot of paperwork.

To know the topic thoroughly, we have to differentiate the capability to trail compliance in numerous areas and as a software; a LMS be compliant with regulations.

It is crucial to understand that the laws & regulations are explicit to regions, states and countries, and these regulations may vary broadly from one region to another.

Below are few definitions and examples from US and Canada.

Below are main compliance issues that a learning management system vendor needs to consider:

Accessibility standards 

ADA or the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ‘794d) of the 1998 Rehabilitation Act are the accessibility regulations ACT in the US.

These standards follow the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. LMS adhering to these standards will help to increase the user base.

Regulatory compliance tracking LMSs are basically large databases and are often questioned to keep track of regulatory compliance with particular government regulation.

Example: In United States.

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

In Canada,

• Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHIMIS)

Security standards Several organizations require secured systems to hoard personal data. This is factual in medicinal industry but applies to other areas as well.

These requirements will include

• Preservation of audit trails,
• Deployment of absolutely closed systems,
• Use digital signatures, such FDA 21 CFR Part 11
• Use of highly encrypted data for industries such as banking.

Interoperability standards 

This is one of the most basic needs of Learning Management System users is the interoperability of different courses developed by developers in the same LMS.

This initiated the creation of one of the first set of Learning Management System standards. In the year 1997, the IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC), a non-profit organization keen in setting stipulations and standards for learning industry.

It created many specifications ever since that date. Around the same time the declaration of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) activity of the US Department of Defense.

ADL built up the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and the ADL Registry of SCORM consistent programming.

LMS merchants are very much aware of both AICC and SCORM, and largely are agreeable with both standards. However, most LMS executions don’t function admirably with these measures and frequently require a time of change and tuning to make them work consistently.

Tracking training for certification 

There are many regulatory compliances for teaching in particular industries, where staffs are necessary to get certified before employment and require to be re-certified on a consistent basis.

Most of Learning Management Systems track certification will trigger spontaneous alerts as certification date arrives.

Machine Learning

This specific need can be controlled by an enactment or by the measures forced by particular industry or the organization itself.

Tracking training for liability reduction 

The Training can aid reduce the accountability for employers in controversial areas. Educational materials on things, such as employment discrimination or sexual harassment, might be less expensive to deliver than a settle down of lawsuits in case of disputes.

Reduction in paperwork 

In conclusion, a completely useful LMS can have highlights that lessen remaining task and printed material for consistence administration.

Such highlights can incorporate auto-enlistment in consistence preparing dependent on occupation, programmed warnings to supervisors and specialists on disappointments to finish consistence preparing, appraisal and assessment of consistence preparing, issuing of authentications on fruition of consistence preparing, and numerous different designs for following and revealing here.

Therefore, the answers are not simple to the questions on compliance and LMS. I hope that this article will help you to sort out what you need in this area.