A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software application for the Administration, Documentation, Tracking, Reporting and Delivery of Electronic Educational Technology (also called e-learning) education courses or training programs. LMS range from systems for managing training and educational records to software for distributing online or blended/hybrid college courses over the Internet with features for online collaboration. Colleges, universities, school districts, and schools use LMSs to deliver online courses and augment on-campus courses. LMSs also act to augment the lessons the teacher is giving in a brick and mortar environment not just replace them. Corporate training departments use LMS to deliver online training, as well as to automate record-keeping and employee registration.

Feature lists are getting quite long and it is not easy to decide which features are the most important unless you have a good background in various areas like instructional design, ergonomics and systems management.

Typical features are:

Course Management, e.g. lists of courses, registration, credit information and syllabus, pre-requisites

Teaching Materials, i.e. courseware

Self-assessment quizzes

Lessons tools: Authoring for contents (structured XML or HTML) and quizzing/testing

Asynchronous Communication: email, forums

Synchronous Communication: chat, whiteboard, teleconferencing

Student tools: Home page, self tests, bookmarks, progress tracking

Student Management Tools: progress tracking, on-line grading (assessment)

Learner feedback: course evaluation surveys, test evaluation surveys etc.