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In short, a requirements document outlines all of the features and functionalities that your association needs for its LMS. Think of it as a wishlist for your perfect system!

Creating a requirements document may seem like a daunting task, but it’s actually not as difficult as it sounds–and taking the time to create a thorough document will pay off in the long run!

A requirements document will ensure that your association gets the LMS that meets all of your specific needs, without leaving you feeling disappointed or frustrated down the line.

Not sure how to start? Don’t worry–we’ve got you covered. Here are our top tips to get you started:

4 Steps to Creating a Requirements Document

1. Define Your Goals

Before you start writing an exhaustive list of every feature you think would be nice to have in an LMS, take a step back and define your goals. Ask yourself:

• What are you looking to achieve with your LMS?
• Do you want to provide online learning opportunities for your members?
• Do you want to reduce administrative burdens?
• Do you want to create a more engaging member experience?

Once you’ve defined your goals, you can start narrowing down your list to features that will help you achieve those goals—and identifying the ones that are simply nice-to-haves.

2. Involve Stakeholders Early

The requirements document isn’t just for you; it’s also meant to be shared with vendors during the RFP/vendor search process. That’s why it’s important to involve key stakeholders early on in the process so that everyone has a chance to provide input.

Is there a need for integration with other key systems, like an association management system? Will you need to customize the LMS for specific workflows within your association?

After all, you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where the vendor provides a system that meets all of your needs but fails to meet the needs of another key stakeholder group!

By involving stakeholders early, you can avoid potential conflict down the road and ensure that everyone is on board with the final decision.

3. Be as Specific as Possible

When outlining the features and functionalities you need in an LMS, be as specific as possible. Include things like:

• The types of content you need to be able to upload (SCORM-based courses, videos, PDFs, etc.)
• The number of users you need to be able to access the system at the same time
• The kinds of reporting features you need
• The types of integration with third-party vendors (Quickbooks, AMS, Zoom, etc.) you want to include

The more precise you are in your requirements document, the simpler it will be for vendors to understand exactly what you’re seeking (and whether they’re able to supply it).

4. Make Sure It’s Feasible

Last but not least, make sure that everything on your list is actually feasible within your budget and your timeline. The best way to determine feasibility is to share your requirements document with vendors either during the RFP/vendor selection process or early in your initial conversations.

Ask vendors if they feel their system is a good fit for your requirements, and see what kind of suggestions (or concerns) they have about the specific features or functionalities you’ve outlined. By getting insight from vendors on feasibility, you can better prioritize your requirements and make the decisions that are best for your organization.

You may also like: Top 5 Reasons To Replace An e-Learning Vendor

Conclusion:

Creating a requirements document can sound difficult, but by following these simple tips, you’ll realize it’s easier than you think!

Creating a comprehensive requirements document is essential in discovering the right LMS for your member-based organization.

By involving key stakeholders early on, being specific in your requirements, and considering feasibility, you can create a list of requirements that truly reflects your needs–and helps you find the LMS that achieves them all!

So, make sure to take your time and create a thorough document–it’ll pay off in spades later when you’re implementing your shiny new LMS.

Happy searching!

The post How Requirements Documents Help Your Association Obtain the Perfect LMS appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.

Tip: Enhance Your Research

The ability to research effectively is a crucial skill in many jobs–especially when in connection with the law: for bar associations and their members alike, fast, accurate legal research capability is essential. Because of this, it’s important to properly organize your association content and boost its accessibility by making it as easy as possible to find; this is particularly important if your association is promoting CLE training and publications. Thankfully, there are a few proven approaches to do exactly that!

Leverage Document Software Designed Specifically for Legal Research

When providing access to legal material, bar associations should use a solution that facilitates searching, highlighting, and annotating legal documents. It’s important to pick one that’s user-friendly and intuitive, as well as one that fully integrates with your website and your learning management platform. You want something that’s a pleasure to use and that allows seamless navigation with the rest of your web environment. For this reason, white-label integration is a must!

And, because you’ll likely be using it frequently, you’ll want one that loads quickly. Focus on SaaS applications (we’ll get to that in the next post!) so you can access content directly on your browser; no external programs means you don’t need to worry about access points (or about carrying around your work PC!). Not only that–web-based solutions are also more likely to incorporate the latest innovations for saving bandwidth and loading time, such as dynamic caches, lazy-loading, and infinite scrolling.

Provide Advanced Search Capabilities

Any modern legal research solution should allow users to combine full-text search in the body of your documents with search-by fields (such as date, author, field of law, etc.). At the minimum, your search engine should support Boolean operators, including:

• AND: Adding “AND” means all linked words must be included.
  • For instance, searching pink AND blue AND green will only give you results that include all three colors; this limits your results.
• OR: Using “OR” means one or the other–not both.
  • For instance, searching pink OR blue OR green will give you results that give you only pink, only blue, or only green–but not a combination of any of them; this gives you a larger pool of more specific results.
• NOT: Searching “NOT” filters out results that contain the word.
  • For instance, searching pink NOT blue NOT green will only give you results for pink, removing anything that mentions blue and/or green; this considerably fine-tunes your results.

Ideally, however, your research solution should also enable users to complete proximity searches; for instance, it should allow for searching within sentences (/s) or paragraphs (/p). Wildcard operators (*) are also highly appreciated by legal researchers, as they allow truncated words and look for all derivatives of a keyword from a single query. For instance, if one were to search “injunct*” to get documents, the solution would also match either “injunction” or “injunctive”. The best legal search solutions provide stemming capability by default, weighing in the possible derivatives (including singular and plural forms!) in their lists of results automatically. Now, that’s helpful!

You’ll probably agree that a common annoyance when browsing the Web is getting a long list of search results without any context about why you’ve received these results in the first place. To guarantee your members reach the pages and documents you invested your efforts in, make sure your search results page guides them in the right direction.

Employing the use of short snippets that are automatically generated from the body of your content and include keywords in context (in bold) are a must. Various ranking mechanisms (by relevance, but also by date, by popularity, etc) can also aid members in their searches. In addition, your members will greatly appreciate the ability to refine their searches directly from the results page (instead of clicking back and forth between distinct search and results pages)!

Finally, when your members reach their destination on the page or document you’ve produced, why not help them navigate it even faster with keyword highlights? This is particularly relevant for larger publications, in which the significant content may be hidden deep within the document.

Curious to see how all of this advice can be combined in practice? Here’s how the State Bar of Wisconsin has done it for its Books Unbound service!

You may also like: Academic vs Association LMS: 4 Key Differences

Conclusion

Research improvements can’t be overlooked when it comes to boosting value for bar associations. With the right tools and savvy, you’ll be able to offer your members an unparalleled search experience!

Next week: the Cloud!

The post Technology Tips and Tools to Help Bar Associations Build Trust and Support Members – Part 2 appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.

What does that mean for member-based organizations? Well, they have to be proactive in providing content that is both useful and relevant to their members, as well as hits on points that more general education may miss.

As noted by Dr. Laurelle Jno Baptiste in a recent webinar, that’s where niche content comes in. Niche content is unique, tailored content that isn’t widely available. It focuses on specific topics or industries and provides your members with valuable information and insight. Typically, the better you tailor your content to your audience, the better your return on investment will be.

When it comes to continuing education, you want to offer courses that really matter to your audience, so focus on timeliness, relevancy, value, and specificity.

1. Set Your Targets

When deciding what content to create, you first need to think of your target audience. Niche content is based directly on its consumers, so if you don’t have a good grasp of your audience, you won’t be taking full advantage of the technique.

The key is to create a persona: a fictional person who will represent your core demographic. You may have multiple personas for different factions of your audience; for example, you may have one for recent grads, one for industry veterans, and one for the group in between.

You can split your targets into as many personas as you want–just remember, each persona represents a group you want to cater your content to. If you aren’t going to make courses for each type, there’s no point wasting time on that persona. It’s best to set your focus on a few main targets–broad enough to capture the majority of your member base (if not all of it!) when they overlap, but narrow enough that you can tailor content specific to that group.

Once you have your personas, do your research:

• Will your topic be in high demand? Is this something your persona’s demographic will actually want? Is it relevant to their needs and interests?
• What topics are the most highly searched? This will help you narrow down your choices. If a topic is highly searched, that’s a good indicator of its potential success.
• Is your topic current or evergreen? Is the topic you’ve picked timely? Perhaps there has been something in the news recently about your topic. Alternately, evergreen topics are those that are timeless; you may want to touch on something that’s often missed out on but that remains highly important in your industry.

Still not sure what to do? Ask your audience! Host polls on your organization’s social media pages to find out what your members are most interested in; you may find that you’ve been missing out on some key areas of opportunity. When in doubt, it’s best to ask directly; your members will appreciate it!

2. Tailor-Made

As mentioned earlier, the more thoroughly you tailor your content to your audience, the better your ROI will generally be.

Consider Facebook or Youtube algorithms; once you click on a topic, they will curate your feed to be more relevant to what they perceive to be your interests. For example, say you click on a Youtube video about making paper flowers; you’ll likely be recommended more origami tutorials (or videos on other similar crafts) next time you go to your home page.

Member-based organizations can learn to do something similar. Pay attention to your analytics: is one of your courses doing particularly well? You may want to create more courses in the same vein; high purchase and use rates indicate that you’ve likely hit on a good topic!

Alternately, if you find a course is doing less-than-stellar compared to the others, you may want to avoid making similar content for the time being.

A good way to boost these results is to make your content highly searchable on your platform. When selecting a learning management system (LMS) to host your education, pick one that allows for tagging, categorizing, and filtering. Members will be able to look up keywords or search for popular courses–making your content easy to find and allowing for more accurate analytics. If a member can’t find it, they can’t buy it–creating a number of problems for your organization!

3. Make it Make Sense

Next, when developing your courses, you want to make sure you’re presenting your information in the optimal format. Make sure to divide your content into neat, digestible segments–this improves retention and increases understandability. If your course doesn’t make sense to your audience, it doesn’t matter how good its concept is–they’ll be too busy being frustrated and confused to get anything valuable out of it!

Because of this, you want to pay as much attention to the actual execution of your material (how it’s created and presented) as you do the topic selection process.

Look into splitting longer courses into modules. Consider: which is easier to process, one four-hour lecture, or eight half-hour lectures? Humans need time to absorb information and build mental connections. Additionally, if your course is too long, you run the risk of overshooting your members’ attention spans. Keep things tight and concise for the best results!

You may also want to add a degree of interactivity to your courses. Video hurdles–in which members are prompted to answer a question on-screen during a video–can help keep viewers on their toes and stay focussed. There are a variety of interactivity types that can be applied to course content, from multiple choice questions to drag and drop activities and more; when used at key points in a module, they can gamify the experience and keep members’ attention where it belongs: on your course!

4. Marketing Mastery

When wielded correctly, niche content courses can be a powerful marketing tool. After all, you’re providing something that isn’t available elsewhere!

First, start by creating a landing page for your courses; this will provide information on and display the value of what you offer. When making advertisements and building campaigns, you can link back to this page, inviting potential members to find out more—you want to drive as much traffic here as you can!

When your page is set to go, you can embark on a social media campaign to market your CE across the internet. When creating your campaign, be sure to take advantage of the many promotional tools the web has to offer; Canva, Hootsuite, and Jasper AI are all great options to keep quality marketing content coming.

Testimonials and quotes from members who have taken your continuing education programs are especially helpful in showing the value of your product. Worried about getting enough responses? A little incentive to help motivate members to share their experiences should do the trick; try offering discounts on courses or coupon codes to those who submit a testimonial!

Finally, when making your content known, make sure to pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO). By creating a wide web of content that promotes your courses across as many channels as possible, you’ll be able to boost your CE’s search page results. When people are aware of the quality, niche content you offer, it’ll be hard to resist!

You may also like: The Inadvertent Dangers of Outsourcing Your Continuing Education to Third-Parties

Conclusion

When developing continuing education courses for your organization, it’s important to focus on finding a niche. You want your content to be relevant, timely, valuable, and a little rare–the more important but overlooked topics you find, the more interesting material you’ll be able to take advantage of.

Remember, your continuing education courses have the power to draw all sorts of new members to your organization–you just have to pick the right topic!

Want to learn more? Check out our webinar, Continuing Education: Your Shield against Economic Headwinds!

The post Supercharge Your CE: Taking Advantage of Niche Content appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how you can increase your member engagement virtually through online networking opportunities, upskilling events, and accessibility options. Don’t fight the tide–go with the flow and make the current yours!

1. Provide Plenty of Opportunities to Network Online

One of the major reasons people join member-based organizations is to connect with other like-minded professionals. Because of this, you want to make sure you’re offering your audience as many interaction opportunities as possible!

First, you’ll want to start with the basics: forums and discussion boards. By hosting these on your organization’s website, you’ll keep from driving traffic away from your brand. These pages will give members the chance to create and reply to threads on all sorts of topics.

You’ll of course want to focus on industry specifics, but give them a chance to socialize a little, too; consider creating a “Media of the Month Club” thread where members can consume the designated media of the month (be it a book, a movie, a podcast, or a TV show) and discuss. All work and no play can make forums a dull section, after all!

Next, you’ll want to work on your member-specific pages. By letting members create their own individual profile pages, you allow them the chance to connect with your organization on a deeper level; customization gives people a sense of ownership over their page (and by extension, their membership).

Offer e-badges for the completion of various courses, tracks, and achievements–these little electronic “stickers” will give members a sense of accomplishment while also promoting your organization’s offerings. You don’t have to stick to the traditional e-badges like “number of courses completed” or “days logged in consecutively”, either–try thinking outside the box for fun and memorable awards. Your members will appreciate the creativity, and you may get a little extra promotional mileage if it’s meme-able!

Finally, you won’t want to forget your organization’s social media channels. Be sure to post consistently, with lots of valuable, timely, and relevant information! Social media is a great place to encourage engagement through contests and giveaways. Reward your members for interacting with your accounts; create games where those who like, comment, and follow you have the chance to win fun prizes or swag. Everyone likes to feel like a winner!

2. Create Endless Opportunities to Upskill

Another main reason people join member-based organizations is to advance their professional development. Don’t leave your members hanging; give them plenty of chances to advance and improve! You can do this in a variety of ways.

First, you’ll want to create a solid backlog of quality continuing education courses. Make sure to focus on topics that members won’t find anywhere else; by offering niche, valuable education, you’ll be putting your organization a step ahead of its CE competitors.

Not everything has to be a multi-part course filled with modules, either; you can provide timely one-off courses (for a reduced fee) that cover emergent topics in your industry. This will let you (and your members!) stay current.

Off/Online: Mutually Exclusive No More!

Hybrid events present a fantastic opportunity for organizations and members alike. These offline-online sessions give you access to up to three audiences (and revenue streams) at once:

• First, you have those who attend the traditional, in-person session.
• Second, by recording the event, you can create an on-demand mini-course to add to your organization’s CE.
• Finally (and optionally), you can choose to livestream the event to those who can’t make it in person.

The potential hybrid events present is unmatched!

If you don’t want to go the hybrid route, however, you still have options. You can host (and record!) live webinars that cover current topics in your industry. To make these sessions extra engaging, make sure to incorporate a chat function.

This is especially important if you choose to host Ask Me Anything sessions with prominent industry experts; the chat function will allow the presenter to interact with the audience and answer questions live! AMAs can also be taken to the member forums, where new members can learn more about their chosen career paths.

Finally, make sure your organization has a strong resource centre where members can find articles, whitepapers, useful links, and more. By creating an information hub, you’re boosting your audience’s trust and keeping them close. Members appreciate having everything at their fingertips.

3. Make Everything Excellently Accessible

You can host all the quality resources you want–if you don’t make them easy to find, your members will never access any of them! You don’t want the work you put into your CE wasted, so be sure to focus on your website’s design, too. You want it to be intuitive, logical, and pleasant.

User interface (i.e. the way your site looks and navigates) is important, but user experience (i.e. how it feels to navigate your site, if the actual flow of the design is logical) is becoming increasingly crucial, too.

One of the first things you look at should be mobile-responsiveness. Users are no longer limited to desktop-view only, so you need your website to look snappy regardless of the screen it’s viewed on. Keep your site up-to-date and modern looking–you don’t want visitors to think you stopped updating in the 90’s!

It is especially important for your website’s search function. You want to make sure that members can find whatever they’re looking for, be it a specific CE course or resource. Make sure there are plenty of filtering options (popularity, date added, category, keywords, etc.) that users can apply.

You also want your content to be easy to navigate and cohesive with your other sites; consistency is key! Make sure your CE section, your organization’s store, your knowledge hub, and your landing pages all connect seamlessly. Your members will thank you!

You may also like: 6 Methods to Easily Increase Member Engagement

Conclusion

While the online world may be hard to adapt to at times, it also presents member-based organizations with a field of new opportunities to discover and make their own. Don’t let these chances pass you by–make sure to give your members plenty of places to network online, to grant many occasions to upskill, and to keep your website highly accessible. Your audience is waiting!

The post Let’s Get Digital: 3 Strategies to Boost Member Engagement Online appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the differences between virtual conference software and learning management systems, as well as how to use them:

How to Tell the Difference between Virtual Conference Software and Learning Management Systems

Virtual conference software and learning management systems are two very separate types of software that organizations use for different purposes. Here are some key ways to tell the difference between the two:

• A Learning Management System is a platform that is used to deliver continuing education courses, as well as to track member progress and compliance.
• Virtual Conference Software, on the other hand, is typically used to live stream or record sessions from conferences or events.
• An LMS will have features like course creation and delivery, quizzes, and assessments.
• Virtual Conference Software, however, will generally not have these features. Instead, it will include features that allow for the live streaming or recording of sessions, as well as chat functions that allow attendees to interact with each other.

How an LMS Can Facilitate Learning after a Conference Is Over

Virtual conference software and learning management systems are separate entities, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be used in tandem! Once your conference is over, you can use an LMS to turn recordings of your conference sessions into continuing education courses. You can add materials and resources, and even let members take quizzes or assessments based on the content.

This provides several benefits: it expands the reach of your educational content (it’s now available to everyone, after all–time and place constraints are no longer an issue!); it allows your organization to provide quality continuing education content; and it increases the value of your membership (the more content you host, the more members get out of your continuing education program).

Additionally, an LMS can be used to track progress and compliance; members can stop and start their courses whenever and wherever, similar to how Netflix remembers where you were in an episode. This allows members to pick up where they left off, making the learning process smooth and seamless.

Overall, by pairing virtual conference software with an LMS, you can gain access to a wealth of resources and information ripe for use, even long after your conference is over. Learning management systems are a valuable, cost-efficient tool for both attendees and conference organizers!

You may also like: Virtual Events vs In-Person Events: Which Should You Choose in 2022?

Conclusion

While virtual conference software and learning management systems are distinct, they can be used in tandem to provide more ways for your audience to access and complete continuing education courses. First, you can stream your conference to members, breaking down the barriers to entry that geography and scheduling conflicts create. Then, you can transform the recordings of these events into high-quality continuing education courses and host them on your LMS, making them available to your entire audience.

Consequently, if you’re looking for a platform to facilitate learning after a conference is over, set your sights on an LMS. It’s the two-birds, one-stone solution that every organization is sure to love!

The post Comparing Virtual Conference Software and Learning Management Systems appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.

Most states require a certain number of CLE hours each year to maintain a law license, but it can be hard to find quality courses that fit members’ busy schedules. And–let’s be honest–most CLE courses aren’t exactly the most exciting things around!

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way! By following a few simple steps, bar associations can start building better CLE courses with ease.

1. Harnessing the Power of Niche Content

When it comes to CLE courses, one size does not fit all. Attorneys will often look for courses specific to their particular area of practice, so the more specialized the content you provide, the better!

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. An attorney who works in criminal law will not be interested in a course on tax law; likewise, a corporate lawyer will not want to sit through a course on family law.

This much may seem obvious, but it can go a step further. Your association should search for interesting, relevant, and unique topics for its courses. Yes, you should have more general courses–these are perfect for introductory programs!–but if you want to really bring value to your membership, try thinking outside the box.

Try to make your content timely. Is there a precedent-setting case in the news? Perhaps you’ll want to do a deep-dive webinar on the details. Are there laws being reexamined or updated? You could cover these, as well!

Additionally, by partnering with experts in various niche areas, bar associations can offer courses that are tailored to specific practices. This will ensure that attendees get the most relevant and useful information possible.

Not only will this make your CLE courses more interesting for attendees, but it will also make your audience more likely to return in the future. You want to capture their intention with insightful, valuable content. After all, why would an attorney take an irrelevant, useless course from their bar association? It’s all about quality!

Once you’ve made your content, make sure to categorize it thoroughly. You want your members to be able to actually find your courses! Keep everything as organized and accessible as possible.

If your bar association is looking to build better CLE courses, consider harnessing the power of tailored content. It’s one surefire way to interest and engage new members! Now, let’s look at a few more:

2. CLE for the Next Generation: Attracting New Members

As the legal profession evolves, so must the way bar associations provide Continuing Legal Education. The needs of lawyers are changing, and bar associations must adapt to continue to meet those needs. In particular, there is a need to engage new lawyers in CLE programs.

First, you have to let your audience know what’s available. Make sure to promote your programs across your association’s social media channels. To spice things up, try offering seasonal packages, keeping things timely and relevant. Remember to be consistent; if you only post rarely and sporadically, you won’t stay in the minds of your members for long!

Next, you want to make things interesting. You can try incorporating gamification into your programs; by making them interactive and offering digital badges as achievement-style rewards, you’ll be upping the excitement factor of your courses. You could even incorporate–selectively!–a few choice memes to amuse your audience.

Third, it’s important to make sure the programs you offer are affordable. New lawyers often have large student loan debts and may be working in jobs that do not pay high salaries. Discounts on CLE programs for new members can make them more accessible to new lawyers.

By offering relevant, convenient, and affordable CLE programs, bar associations can better engage new lawyers with their educational offerings. This, in turn, will help to ensure that your members’ careers–and your association’s membership base–continue to thrive!

3. Two Birds, One Stone: the Value of the Hybrid Events 

As the world becomes increasingly mobile and virtual, it can be difficult to know how to best engage your members; is it better to do in-person or online sessions?

The answer is simple: host a hybrid event!

Hybrid events are a combination of in-person and virtual courses, and they offer several benefits to both bar associations and their members. There are a number of ways to make your event hybrid, like livestreaming the session on your association’s website, or else recording and posting it online after the event–or, even better, both!

Hybrid CLE courses allow members who cannot attend in-person to still participate and receive credit. This is especially beneficial for members who have busy schedules. Livestreamed courses take care of geographical limitations, and on-demand recorded courses open the field up to everyone.

Hybrid CLE courses allow bar associations to further their reach and increase their earning potential at the same time. You’re making your session accessible to an entire second audience–without losing the first–and bypassing the most common barriers to entry for in-person events. This means you can earn more revenue than from an in-person event alone!

The use of hybrid CLE courses is a win-win for both bar associations and their members. By offering these courses, bar associations can ensure that their members are able to receive the education they need–while simultaneously expanding their reach and non-dues revenue!

You may also like: The Top 5 Strategies for Bar Associations to Increase CLE Revenue in 2021 and Beyond

When it comes to building better CLE for your bar association, it’s best to pay attention to the basics: focus on tailoring your content, attracting new members, and increasing accessibility. You want solid, quality courses that no one else offers; you want to attract new members with your value and ease of use; and you want to reach as wide an audience as possible. Follow ACLEA’s footsteps and “Adjust, Collaborate, and Elevate”!

The post Building Better CLE: Tips for Bar Associations appeared first on Online Learning Solutions | Association Management System | Vocalmeet.