9 Essential LXP Features You Should Know About

While a learning management system (LMS) is designed to manage, deliver, and track online training, a learning experience platform (LXP) aims to provide an elevated, personalized, and engaging learning experience for the user.

But as the online learning market faces changes and adapts to new working environments, learning technology platforms are starting to combine the elements of each platform type, seeing them more as feature sets and often combining functionalities into one do-all solution.

However, all organizations are different and may require specific features to suit their business and upskilling needs. So, we’ve lined up nine essential learning experience platform features to help highlight how they could impact your learning and development strategy.

Answering the global upskilling demand

Corporate training is looking to rest firmly with online learning platforms, with the number of users expected to rise to 57 million by 2027. 

In the US, 45% of experts in talent teams have expressed that one of their biggest challenges is the inability to “find enough new hires with the skills they need”. With the growing skills shortage, many organizations have pivoted to leveraging corporate learning in their growth initiatives.

In today’s working environment, eLearning is crucial for upskilling and reskilling employees spread over different cities, regions, or even countries. Learning experience platforms are solutions that can help learning and development teams meet the above demands by providing flexible, personalized, and AI-powered learning functionalities. 

LXPs are leveraged to create a comprehensive learning ecosystem by bringing content curation, social learning, and user-generated content all in one place. Notably, the best of these eLearning platforms are famed for their user-friendly interfaces. 

As we shall see, LXP providers are at the forefront of incorporating and powering their solutions with artificial intelligence (AI) to boost personalization and more impactful learning content recommendations—ramping up learner engagement in the process.

10 key features of a learning experience platform you should know about

1. Personalized skills and learning paths

The first must-have learning experience platform functionality you should look for is personalized skills or learning paths. 

For learning and development that focuses on upskilling, learning paths tailored to meet individual learners where they are is crucial—especially for those unique skills your organization needs. Check that the solutions you consider include recommendations or skills tagging to deliver the right content to the right employees in the flow of work.  

Custom career and skills paths align your learning opportunities, workforce planning, and career development while helping you impact critical business goals, such as higher retention.  

Extra functionality to map the skills within your organization, identify skills gaps, and deploy content to close those will go a long way in helping you ramp up your learning strategy, increase internal mobility, and prove impact.

2. AI-powered recommendations

Artificial intelligence, adaptive learning, and machine learning are taking the LXP market by storm, and vendors are working around the clock to ensure that their solutions are up-to-date. 

A great example is AI-powered content recommendations, which will save your team time and money while meeting your learners’ needs. Learning systems that include tools powered by algorithms will help you deliver personalized learning paths to employees at pace and boost your skill development efforts by automatically identifying skills gaps. 

If you come across a solution that includes functionality for real-time content recommendation updates and suggestions based on training popular amongst a learner’s peers, give it some extra consideration. 

Look for platforms that empower you to leverage AI to identify and grow the skills your employees and organization need.

3. Mobile learning

A modern LXP needs to include mobile learning functionality so learners can access learning anywhere, anytime. 

A robust mobile app is a must for a learning experience platform. Check that there is functionality for microlearning, adaptive design, offline availability, and interactive features such as quizzes to help elevate those engagement and retention metrics.

4. Skills insights

A skills dashboard is an excellent LXP feature to help you and your team stay current when tracking and developing your learner’s skills. 

Most L&D teams are looking at how they can boost their workforce planning. With your organization’s skills insights at your fingertips, you can identify where to focus on upskilling or reskilling. 

A good LXP will feature a dashboard with tools for visualizing and tracking the skills in your organization. It will also empower your team to tag learning materials with skills while providing access to searchable skills for learners to find the right content in their workflow as they need. 

5. Gamification

Gamification, or game-based learning, is a great way to increase employee engagement, with employees experiencing a 48% engagement increase with a gamified work experience. 

Gamification mechanics will include achievement badges for gaining new skills or completed courses, leaderboards for healthy competition among colleagues, or interactive quizzes—all great features for encouraging collaborative learning. 

6. Social learning

Social or collaborative learning is a training method where employees share knowledge and expertise, learning from one another and enhancing the learning experience.

Look for an LXP that empowers learners to share insights and materials in a vibrant learning ecosystem through user-generated content to boost engagement. These learning experiences are great for sharing organizational knowledge, ranging from discussion on forums to connecting new hires to mentors.

We recommend a learning solution that makes it easy for your internal experts to create and share their knowledge so you can deliver relevant training to employees. Look for functionality that makes this collaborative process easy and includes functionality to fuse your subject-matter expert content with industry-leading courses.

7. Content curation and aggregation

Your learning experience platform needs to elevate your eLearning content creation and curation—not restrict you to the content in your solution.

With a modern LXP, you and your team can aggregate your resources from anywhere on the web to create the right upskilling or reskilling content. Ensure that the solution you’re considering lets you aggregate content from your LMS if you already have one.

Next, check that it integrates with any third-party, business-critical solutions that employees use regularly, such as LinkedIn or Salesforce. To reduce onboarding time for your team and anyone helping you create content, look for solutions that let you create content with a mouse click, such as with an AI-powered L&D sidekick. 

8. Data analytics & reporting

In learning & development, measuring the impact of your learning opportunities is essential for proving impact, especially in those vital stakeholder meetings. 

Your LXP will need to empower your data analytics and reporting process so you can see if your upskilling and reskilling is closing gaps and to ensure you are delivering modules or courses that are achieving desired outcomes.  It’s also a good idea to check that the solution integrates with xAPI and SCORM.

Different organizations have different learner and business needs, so click through the product page and see what assessment dashboards are on offer. Good platforms will have course, classroom, group, and manager dashboards. As mentioned above, double-check that you can track, filter, and report on the skills your learners are developing.

9. User interface & onboarding

Finally, learners and admins won’t have a good user experience if the platform doesn’t have a user-friendly interface. 

Once you’re down to a few options on your LXP wishlist, contact the providers and ask for a demo. Like many big purchases, a test run is a great idea to check that the solution is a good fit for you and your organization. 

See if the LXP has a responsive design. Be sure to ask about the new user onboarding process: are there tutorials or materials to help everyone use your new tool quickly and confidently?

The right tool matters

When looking for a tool to help you see your learning strategy through, remember to find a solution that suits the needs of your L&D team, learners, and organization.

We recommend you consider an all-in-one solution combining the features of an LXP, LMS, and Academies to boost your organization’s internal mobility and empower your employees to upskill from within. 

Discover the easiest way to onboard and upskill employees, train customer-facing teams, and enable customers and partners with 360Learning.