Beyond the LMS: Building Community and Connection in Higher Ed

Leaders in higher education have long relied on Learning Management Systems (LMSs), to organize, deliver, and manage all elements of online learning for their students. While these platforms can efficiently manage content and logistics, they often fall short in creating the sense of community and connection that students and instructors crave. True engagement requires more than a repository for resources—it requires interaction, collaboration, and meaningful connections.

Fortunately, if you’re looking to utilize the many benefits of an LMS system while still providing a quality experience to your students in higher education, there’s a way forward. By integrating an LMS with a virtual classroom solution, you’ll be able to offer a complete system for enhancing the student and instructor experience. Together, these tools can future-proof higher education by bridging the gap between efficiency and engagement, creating a truly connected learning environment.

Why an LMS alone isn’t enough

Whether in traditional, in-person settings, or online learning environments, the LMS plays a foundational role in organizing content, tracking progress, and facilitating assessments. However, as a standalone tool, an LMS is not enough to address one of the most critical components of effective learning: a sense of community and connection.

In fact, building a sense of community and fostering connection are vital considerations in online course development, as they directly address common student concerns about engagement and collaboration. In a random sample of 1,008 undergraduates, 57% of respondents said maintaining interest in course material was “worse online,” and 65% said they had fewer opportunities to collaborate with peers. A different survey of over 3,000 higher education students reported that 78% of students said their online experiences were not engaging, and 75% said they missed face-to-face interactions with instructors and peers.

The challenge of static content delivery

The LMS offers students access to recorded lectures, readings, and assignments. While this supports flexibility, it often results in a one-sided learning experience. Without opportunities for live interactions, students can miss out on the personal connections of peer-to-peer learning that can happen naturally in real-time discussions. While asynchronous learning environments are convenient, they can lead to feelings of isolation and limit spontaneous knowledge-sharing moments that can deepen understanding and engagement.

Constraints on the instructor-student relationship

Another pretty significant limitation of the LMS is its inability to facilitate dynamic, in-the-moment interactions between instructors and students. Without tools for real-time feedback and interaction, instructors lack the opportunity to adapt lessons based on student reactions or questions. This static approach to content delivery and engagement makes the learning experience feel impersonal, reducing its overall effectiveness.

A complete solution: Why a virtual classroom is a critical complement to the LMS

The virtual classroom fills the gaps that the LMS leaves behind, offering tools for live, synchronous learning that help create that critical sense of community that both students and instructors need to be successful. By integrating these two systems, institutions in higher education can provide a more holistic and impactful learning environment, uniting convenience and connection for maximum impact.

Here’s how these two powerful solutions work together for a complete, cyclical solution.

• The LMS manages course materials, assessments, assignments, and communication channels. As a central hub, it provides a place for students to access learning materials, take assessments, and communicate with peers and instructors. This ensures all resources and progress tracking are easily accessible in one single source of truth.
• Virtual classrooms provide real-time interaction, leveraging materials from the LMS. They bring the static content in the LMS to life by enabling live discussions, group work, and interactive teaching sessions. These environments allow instructors to expand on materials housed in the LMS, answer questions, and create collaborative opportunities that deepen student understanding and engagement.
• Learner progress from the live virtual classroom session is passed back to the LMS. The integration between the LMS and virtual classroom ensures that learner progress is tracked back and recorded seamlessly. Attendance, participation, and engagement data from the virtual classroom can be passed back to the LMS, creating a unified record of student activity and giving instructors a comprehensive view of each learner’s journey.
• Interactive recordings blend together synchronous and asynchronous learning. Traditional recordings are often passive and disengaging, offering little more than a replay of static content. In contrast, recordings from virtual classrooms integrated with interactive LMS content transform asynchronous learning into a dynamic experience. By enabling learners to interact with polls, assessments, and whiteboards while following real-time chat replays, interactive recordings blur the lines between asynchronous and synchronous learning, creating an engaging, active learning environment​

By integrating these two systems, higher education institutions can create a complete learning ecosystem that combines the structure and flexibility of the LMS with the dynamic, human-centered interaction of the virtual classroom.

Enhancing the student and instructor experience

Integrated systems that combine an LMS with a virtual classroom can also dramatically improve the teaching and learning experience. These systems work together to enable deeper engagement, simplify processes, and create a user-friendly environment.

Students and instructors feel more connected in a live, interactive environment, and virtual classrooms encourage active participation through features like live polls, quizzes, and breakout rooms for collaborative activities and discussions. Virtual classrooms empower instructors to deliver immediate feedback through chat, live annotations, breakout rooms, and one-on-one discussions.

An integrated system also simplifies course setup and reduces administrative burden for instructors. Tasks like tracking attendance, grading assignments, and managing schedules become seamless and automated. Course materials are loaded into the LMS once and remain easily accessible in both the LMS and the virtual classroom.

By automating these administrative tasks, instructors spend less time managing logistics and more time creating engaging lessons and memorable experiences for their students. Together, LMS and virtual classrooms create a more enriching experience for both students and instructors, positioning higher ed institutions for success in an increasingly digital landscape.

Make online learning click with a seamless, engaging ecosystem

The future of higher education lies in creating dynamic learning environments that seamlessly blend the structure of an LMS with the interactivity of a purpose-built virtual classroom. This integrated approach not only caters to the growing demand for hybrid and flexible learning models but also ensures consistency and quality in the student experience.

By combining these two powerful technologies, institutions can support larger and more geographically dispersed student cohorts while empowering educators with innovative teaching tools like breakout rooms, live polls, and real-time feedback. This fusion fosters community, enhances engagement, and simplifies processes for both students and instructors—all within a single, unified platform.

With a seamless LMS integration, Class completes the online learning environment, enabling the best of synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning in one single place. Is your institution leveraging the full potential of your LMS? Discover how Class can transform your virtual learning experience: Speak with an expert today.