Here’s How To Choose The Best Social And Collaborative Learning Platforms
What is social and collaborative learning and how can learning platforms focused on these approaches help your business? To put it simply, social and collaborative learning platforms are tools managers and businesses can leverage to enhance the learning experience, as users learn from and with others.
The main focus of these learning solutions is that learners can share knowledge and interact with one another. Of course, as with every need, there are a whole bunch of collaborative and social learning platforms you can use to engage your learners. But do they have the right features? For example, you might like to use course sharing and commenting. Or maybe you’re interested in utilizing course ratings, blogs, and course discussions. Choosing one of the best social and collaborative learning platforms out there can give a nudge and make training more engaging. Even for team members that have never taken a course in their lives.
As we move forward, social and collaborative learning platforms are the way to go. After all, company growth and success are all about teamwork and collaboration. However, if you want to allow users to collaborate, share, and comment on your organization’s learning experiences, you need to do so on a secure and trusted network. That’s a must for both informal and formal learning experiences.
To help you make a better decision for your business needs, we selected the best LMS vendors in the market to empower your teams to share knowledge.
Check out this top list to:
- Discover must-have LMS features for social and collaborative learning.
- Get ideas for use cases and explore other success stories.
- Read reviews and compare top LMS platforms.
Keep reading and make your own decision on which LMS tool best fits your social and collaborative learning needs.
The Best Social And Collaborative Learning Platforms
If your company is listed among the top LMS solutions for social and collaborative learning in 2022, feel free to add this badge to your website.
360Learning’s LMS Is Designed From The Ground Up For Collaborative Learning
Upskill from within with the LMS for collaborative learning. Leverage Subject Matter Experts and facilitate knowledge sharing at scale—whether you’re building onboarding, product training, or leadership skills.
They make it easy to build a culture of collaborative learning. Request a demo to find out how.
Also, make sure to visit our directory to read 360Learning reviews.
Highlights
- Enable Your Experts To Create Courses In Minutes
- Facilitate Knowledge Sharing With Peer-To-Peer Learning
- Scale Training Programs With Relevant Learning
Highlights
- Enable Your Experts To Create Courses In Minutes
Empower any Subject Matter Expert in your company to create engaging courses in a few minutes with their collaborative authoring tool.
- Facilitate Knowledge Sharing With Peer-To-Peer Learning
Connect learners with experts so everyone has the knowledge they need to learn and grow.
- Scale Training Programs With Relevant Learning
Enable collaborative learning at scale with tools and insights to decentralize training ownership.
Plans and Pricing
360Learning has flexible plans and pricing to help you bring a culture of collaborative learning to your organization—whether a team of 100 or 100,000. They offer a monthly self-service plan for small teams and custom packages for larger organizations.
Tap Into TalentLMS’s Social And Collaborative Features To Meet Training Success
Trusted by 70k+ teams, TalentLMS gives you all the tools you need to bring your admins, instructors, and learners together. Connect your teams, encourage cooperative learning, and cover more ground, faster.
Social and collaborative learning feels right from the very first click on TalentLMS.
Start free today!
Explore TalentLMS reviews.
Highlights
- Blend Your Learning Environment
- Open Up The Conversation
- Foster A Healthy Sense Of Competition
Highlights
- Blend Your Learning Environment
Schedule Instructor-Led Training and create interactive learning opportunities. Involve your learners with live webinars to boost retention with increased participation.
Transfer knowledge from the top down and break down skill silos. Pool your people’s expertise with discussion boards, direct messaging, and more.
- Foster A Healthy Sense Of Competition
Incentivize the learning experience with gamification. Reward and track learner progress with badges, trophies, and leaderboards.
Plans and Pricing
Try for free; upgrade when you’re ready. Get the most out of TalentLMS with your forever free account! Test the LMS platform for as long as you like and scale to a paid plan when you want. And, with 8 accessible price tiers, you’ll never pay for what you don’t need.
Reimagine Trainings With Best-In-Class Collaboration And Engagement
An experience-driven learning platform that includes a full-fledged social learning engine, this LMS helps offer highly effective trainings to employees, partners, and customers. Plus, it enables all learners to engage at every level. Would you like to join some of the world’s best brands, that use Adobe Captivate Prime to engage their learners?
Explore Adobe Captivate Prime reviews.
Highlights
- Peer-To-Peer Informal Learning
- Engagement Driven By Personalization And Collaboration
- Engaged Learners With Gamification, Certifications, And Badges
Highlights
- Peer-To-Peer Informal Learning
Use social learning to share knowledge on social learning boards aligned to specific skills.
- Engagement Driven By Personalization And Collaboration
AI-based recommendations, learning paths, and dashboards make training fun and engaging.
- Engaged Learners With Gamification, Certifications, And Badges
Recognize and reward social learning participation, in addition to the gamification engine aligned to learning progress.
Plans and Pricing
Adobe Captivate Prime has the tools to set your team up for success. Choose between active user or monthly user plans based on your use case. Best of all? You can start off your courses with a few simple clicks. Designing learning paths is so much easier when you have the right tool. Plus, you can even make learning plans to register your learners automatically!
iSpring Learn Is An Easy-To-Use LMS For Launching Corporate eLearning In A Day
iSpring has been helping companies grow their people since 2001. Its ultimate goal is to provide robust software that won’t need complex IT implementation. iSpring Learn will make your eLearning projects hassle-free and help yield quick results. Ready to train your employees, partners, and customers in a new effective way?
Get a free 14-day trial of iSpring Learn and start today!
For customer feedback, make sure to check iSpring Learn reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Gamified Learning And Elements Of A Friendly Competition
- Feedback, Review, And DM Options For Better Communication
- Zoom And MS Teams Integration For Launching Live Training From The LMS
Highlights
- Gamified Learning And Elements Of A Friendly Competition
Foster employee engagement: motivate learners to become more involved in the training process with points, badges, and dynamic leaderboards.
- Feedback, Review, And DM Options For Better Communication
Ask questions to course authors in designated Q&A sections. Users can connect to each other directly via a built-in messenger.
- Zoom And MS Teams Integration For Launching Live Training From The LMS
Schedule conference calls and get everyone together on video without leaving the LMS. Perfect for the blended learning model!
Plans and Pricing
iSpring Learn mirrors your company structure and offers a wonderful collaborative environment for employee training and development. Its pricing is based on active users who access the LMS during a given month. The price ranges from $2.82 to $3.66 per user.
Empowering Learning Through An Integrated eLearning Platform
Learning Pool recognizes the importance of social and collaborative learning, and that’s why their platform, Stream LXP, focuses a lot on sharing knowledge. Leverage their course format and gamified elements to transform the LXP into a social platform and beyond. They can surely help you deliver upskilling, social, and end-user learning at its best.
Try Stream LXP, a learning suite that evolves with your ambition.
For more info, explore Stream LXP reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Social Intelligence Dashboard
- Manager Sign-Off And Feedback
- User-Generated Content
Highlights
- Social Intelligence Dashboard
Unique semantic and sentiment analysis reporting provides unparalleled insight into engagement and positivity to identify high fliers and those that require intervention.
- Manager Sign-Off And Feedback
Connect team members with their managers across any device, including 1-2-1 feedback messages and OTJ sign-off.
Learners create their own content directly from any device to share with tutors and other users, to create communities of inquiry around learners’ submissions.
Plans and Pricing
Stream Learning Suite puts social and collaborative learning at the heart of the modern, connected, personalized, and effective learning experience that today’s learners expect. Seamlessly integrated with the lowest total cost of ownership in its class.
The Rockstar Learning Platform Enables Collaborative Learning
By teaming up with ELB Learning you get a one-stop-shop for creating and delivering better learning experiences. Their LMS, the Rockstar Learning Platform, makes social and collaborative learning easy. Trust that their team can help you create engaging learning content. Do you want to deploy your own social learning?
Sign up for a free Rockstar Learning Platform account.
Visit our directory for Rockstar Learning Platform reviews.
Highlights
- User-Generated Content
- Share With Boards
- Peer-To-Peer Video-based Learning
Highlights
Users can share text, images, and videos. Best of all, your videos can be automatically translated for multilingual close captions and voice-over!
Users can utilize boards by adding the content they like most. Then, they can instantly share any relevant boards and their favorite content with users or groups they collaborate with.
- Peer-To-Peer Video-based Learning
This is an opportunity to add time-coded expert commentary into any video and then add it to boards for sharing and educating others.
Plans and Pricing
If you’re searching for a powerful yet easy-to-use solution for social and collaborative learning, the Rockstar Learning Platform will meet your needs today, and allow you to innovate in the future. This platform offers several plans to fit your needs, from a free starter account to enterprise plans and integrated course libraries.
Deliver Great Learning Experiences And Promote Effective Collaboration
CYPHER LEARNING provides a learning hub for schools, corporations, and entrepreneurs. Their platform can be used to create engaging content, track learner progress, promote collaboration, and easily sell online courses. Do you want to find out how you can reshape learning?
Explore their Intelligent Learning Platform (ILP).
For user feedback, read MATRIX LMS reviews.
Highlights
- MATRIX Is A Top LMS With Learning Analytics Tools
- Focuses On Personalized Learning
- Mentoring Opportunities + Content Offerings
Highlights
- MATRIX Is A Top LMS With Learning Analytics Tools
Comprehensive reports and deep analytics. Self-paced courses for a great learning experience. Effective training programs, regardless of location.
- Focuses On Personalized Learning
Their Intelligent Learning Platform (ILP) is the evolution of the LMS as it empowers learners to do and achieve more. For example, the system prompts users to enroll in a course, participate in a Q&A, watch a video, join a study group, etc.
- Mentoring Opportunities + Content Offerings
By utilizing the help of learners who have already mastered their goals, you can enable active mentoring. Apart from this, you can enrich your content by accessing high-quality third-party content (e.g., LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, or Go1).
Plans and Pricing
You can sign up for a 14-day free trial and get hands-on experience using the platform and the premium features. After that, you can select the pricing plan that best suits your needs. There are no setup fees, cancellation fees, or hidden costs.
Deliver Training In An Interactive Learning Environment Built For Engagement
Absorb Engage enhances the Absorb LMS learner experience with social and collaborative features such as polls, leaderboards, news feeds, social media tiles, and more.
Discover how Absorb Engage for Absorb LMS drives learning outcomes by making training more social.
Care to see what other users have to say? Read Absorb LMS reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Boost Course Completion Rate
- Facilitate Informal Learning
- Inspire Healthy Competition
Highlights
- Boost Course Completion Rate
Take online training from a requirement to an engaging learning experience learners enjoy.
- Facilitate Informal Learning
Complement formal eLearning with peer gatherings, discussions, breakout rooms, forums, and more.
- Inspire Healthy Competition
Use leaderboards to give learners a chance to compete with their peers as they advance through courses and curricula.
Plans and Pricing
Absorb Software uses a tailored pricing model, ensuring you receive the products and level of service that meets your needs and your budget—including options with Absorb Engage.
Connect Employees With Social And Collaboration Tools That Enhance Learning
Schoox’s learning platform, with its Social Collaboration module, helps organizations foster group communication, drive social learning and gamification, and cultivate a more connected learning culture. Reach learners fast and help them stay connected with groups, discussion boards, badges, and more.
Learn about the Schoox Social Collaboration module.
For user input, make sure to read Schoox reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Drive Team Building With Groups And Discussion Boards
- Improve Social Communication
- Make Learning Fun And Drive Competition
Highlights
- Drive Team Building With Groups And Discussion Boards
Create cross-functional groups with curated learning activities around different topics where employees can collaborate and share ideas or content.
- Improve Social Communication
Help employees stay connected with each other and the organization through news feeds, messaging, and announcements to celebrate achievements, share updates, and more.
- Make Learning Fun And Drive Competition
Turn on leaderboards and badges to drive friendly, performance-based competition. Build custom games and rules for learners to earn points and level up.
Plans and Pricing
Schoox’s social collaboration tools foster engagement, communication, and collaboration to strengthen learning. Thanks to the authentic connection opportunities created through the Schoox learning platform, clients have seen logins double year over year.
iTacit Is A Complete Social Intranet, Digital Workplace, And Award-Winning LMS
iTacit connects employees to their work, the organization, and each other. They build culture across your digital workplace tools while helping leaders find cost efficiencies and standardize processes.
Get a social learning hub your employees will love!
For more on its UX, read iTacit reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Fast-Paced And Collaborative Learning
- All In One Place
- Better Workforce Communication
Highlights
- Fast-Paced And Collaborative Learning
Supports microlearning, collaboration, and social learning.
A hub for documents, career development, and interactive tools.
- Better Workforce Communication
Link learning to critical processes and communication tools.
Plans and Pricing
iTacit is based on modular pricing. For more information, visit their website.
Create A Learning Culture By Sharing Knowledge And Experiences
The G-Cube Learning Suite enables learners to collaborate and share experiences to foster peer learning. It empowers mentors to unlock their teams’ potential while promoting healthy competition among users.
Browse G-Cube’s case studies to know how this LMS unearths the knowledge and shares it with your rank and file.
For more info, read G-Cube LMS Enterprise reviews in our directory.
Highlights
- Foster Collaboration
- Community Support
- Boost Engagement
Highlights
Social learning enhances communication and brings the learners together to enable a collaborative environment, beyond training.
Incorporating social learning gives learners access to online communities that helps gain peer support and engage in knowledge transfer.
Social learning makes the trainings more engaging by ensuring they are interactive and collaborative.
Plans and Pricing
G-Cube offers active user-based pricing. Their LMS offers seamless integration of social learning to solidify your eLearning strategy.
Top List Ranking: eLearning Industry’s LMS Selection Criteria
Globally recognized LMS experts, including C. Pappas and our editorial team, did a thorough review of each vendor’s eligibility and relevant published content (articles, eBooks, webinars). Our committee ranked the top LMS solutions for learning accessibility on the following 9 criteria:
- Customer support
- Customer experience
- Software features
- Software innovation
- Customer reviews
- Economic growth potential
- Company’s customer retention
- Employee turnover
- Company’s social responsibility
Now that you’ve gone through our top LMS list rankings, please make sure to read our tips and insights. All the information shared below will help you choose the best tool for your social and collaborative learning platform needs.
Compare The Best LMS Solutions For Social And Collaborative Learning
Foster collaboration, improve communication, and drive performance with the best collaborative learning platforms. Filter by relevant features and compare top vendors!
Benefits Of Social And Collaborative Learning Technologies
Many organizations choose social learning platforms as a solution so that they can create, manage, and deliver engaging employee training programs. These solutions are a bit different than the typical Learning Management Systems (LMS), mainly because they empower learners to interact using the model of social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. If your team enjoys this model, you’ll have no problem engaging people and providing a human context to their learning experiences with these platforms.
On the other hand, collaborative learning platforms allow a group of people to join together. They can either choose to solve a problem or learn a new skill. Or they can even work on creating a service or a product. Most of these platforms are designed to unleash the full potential of high-growth start-ups and businesses.
By combining the LMS with online collaborative tools, you help your teams access collective expertise and share knowledge on the spot. Here are only some of the benefits of social and collaborative learning platforms:
- Preparing learners for real-world situations
- Capturing important decisions and collating key discussions
- Putting training material into context for deeper learning
- Opening learners to new perspectives to understanding a problem
- Affording trainees opportunities for communication and leadership
What I love about these social LMS platforms is that you can learn and collaborate in the flow of work. It’s not just that you can create content and share knowledge. You get to develop as a group and empower your Subject Matter Experts.
The Best Features Social And Collaborative Learning Platforms Should Have
Social and collaborative learning platforms can contain a wide range of features. Most of them tap into the active learning benefits so that training becomes more engaging.
Let’s see some of the most desirable features of a social and collaborative learning platform:
Studies have shown that incorporating game elements into work improves learning outcomes. Gamification allows you to empower learners with rewards and badges! You can utilize them to incentivize learning and get them thirsty for more. Plus, interactive quizzes and team challenges can make things even more exciting as collaboration comes into play. Gamification is the way to go if you want to encourage active learning and make your workplace more fun.
Having a constant flow of constructive feedback will help drive learning and performance. Truth be told, learning material needs to continuously improve. So, getting peer feedback will help everyone stay updated and be more effective. No critique, just tips for improvement. Also, video conferencing tool integration is crucial for feedback and communication.
Utilizing a live Q&A can fill in information gaps very fast. And your co-workers will ask questions. So, having this feature helps them get immediate answers from fellow learners. Combining a social Q&A with a discussion forum is a plus! This is a must if you’re looking for an efficient knowledge-sharing system. In addition, it’ll save you much time since you’ll be able to resolve open questions in batches.
What’s more engaging than creating your own animated videos, right? Using this feature will help your information get easily digested and make information retention a breeze.
You’ll need your platform to have SCORM compatibility if you’re planning to purchase third-party courses.
LMS Vendor Selection And Evaluation For Social And Collaborative Learning
For me, collaborative learning is a favorite training methodology because employees get the chance to share their subject-matter expertise. And they can do so as a group. That’s perfect for team building. Also, learning from peers and teaching courses based on your own experience and knowledge can make a massive difference for the company you’re working for. Why? Because gained knowledge stays within the company and expands. This is essential if you’re planning to scale.
Some learning platforms enable collaborative learning by including social, peer-based, and collaborative elements within the UI of the learning experience itself. In contrast, others offer them as an add-on. Thus, when choosing your learning platform, try to define if all the features you need are included. Also, ensure that the learning experience is something your team members will enjoy.
Please consider these for your LMS comparison and evaluation:
- Discussion forums, Q&A, reactions, peer feedback
- Gamification elements and engagement tools
- Video creation and video conferencing integration
- Explore reviews, awards won, and relevant success stories
- Make sure to take some LMS free trials to get more insight
Active learning is key to success, and implementing a social and collaborative learning platform can bring you one step closer to your goals. According to a recent study, organizations that focus on collaboration are five times more likely to drive high performance.
If you’re ready to introduce more human interaction to your learning approach, you can try any of the learning platforms in this top list!
Next Steps
As you can understand, there’s a wide variety of online learning collaboration platforms. Some of them are better for companies, while others are the best fit for educational institutions. Either way, your needs or the needs of your colleagues or employees is what will define your LMS decision.
Things are shifting, and in a post-pandemic world, collaboration is once again a top priority for companies. No matter if you’re on a hybrid model, remote working, or have returned to the office, implementing collaborative learning will help you stay ahead in the game.
Are you curious to learn more?
Feel free to explore our collaborative learning resources!
We hope that this top list helped you find the one social and collaborative learning platform that can help you achieve your exceptional goals while working on it alongside your colleagues.
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