UA LMS, the new learning management system for faculty and staff, is live and offers a robust and growing selection of educational offerings.
The University of Alabama’s new Learning Management System puts a library of thousands of free, online courses at the disposal of UA faculty and staff. Topics range from instructional design and e-learning to customer service and work-life balance.
“If you have an interest, you will find it here,” said Lacee Nisbett, e-learning and UA LMS administrator for the department of human resources learning and development.
HR’s partnership with LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, accounts for thousands of these courses, with more choices added each month. While you can link to your LinkedIn professional profile, it’s not necessary to do so, or even to have a LinkedIn profile — simply skip that step and proceed with training. (If you do connect your LMS courses to your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn will not track or share that information with UA.)
There are so many LinkedIn Learning topics from which to choose, they’ve been broken down into categories in the LMS catalog:
- Audio and Music
- Business Software and Tools
- Customer Service
- Design Skills and Software
- Finance and Accounting
- Human Resources
- Information Technology
- Leadership and Management
- Marketing, Sales and Business
- Microsoft Software
- Professional Development
- Training and Education
- Website Design
- Work-Life Balance
Micro-Learning, Playlists and Live Instructors
Micro-Learning — UA LMS is designed for micro-learning, Nisbett said, allowing you to access as much or as little of a course as you need. She gave the example of a user wanting to learn to do a certain task in Excel software. “That person doesn’t have to spend two hours on it; the system allows the user to find the appropriate section and access that information without having to complete the rest of the course.”
Playlists — To make it easier to keep up with all the choices, you can create a playlist of your courses of interest; no need to feel overwhelmed.
Instructor-led Courses — Online courses are an addition to instructor-led courses, not a replacement for them. Employees register online at ualms.ua.edu to attend instructor-led courses HR Learning and Development offers on communication and diversity, leadership and management, policies and procedures, and much more. Most instructor-led courses are free, Nisbett said, but a few require a fee to cover materials used in the sessions.
Learning how to use UA LMS
You have several options for learning how to use the new platform.
- Jump in, look around and try out a course or two.
- Go to LMS Frequently Asked Questions.
- Register for HR Spark: Intro to UA LMS. These 90-minute sessions are offered twice a month and held in the Employee Resource Center computer lab.
- Send questions to hrlearninganddevelopment@ua.edu.