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Learning Platform Evaluation — Requirements Gathering Questions ​

Use this question bank in discovery sessions with institutional or organizational stakeholders before selecting platforms to evaluate or issuing an RFP. The answers define which of the 13 scoring categories carry the most weight and which criteria can be reduced or zeroed out for a given context.

Questions are tagged by priority: [High] = must answer before shortlisting; [Medium] = shapes scoring weights; [Low] = useful context.

Organizational Context ​

  • [High] What type of organization is conducting this evaluation? (Higher education institution / K-12 district / corporate L&D / government / non-profit / EdTech provider / individual creator)
  • [High] Who are the primary learners? (Students enrolled in credit-bearing courses / employees / customers / partners / members of the public)
  • [High] What is the primary use case? (Degree/certificate program delivery / employee onboarding & compliance / professional development / customer education / open/public MOOC delivery / blended classroom support)
  • [Medium] Is there an existing platform that will be replaced, or is this a net-new deployment?
  • [Medium] If replacing an existing platform, what is driving the change? (Cost / feature gaps / end-of-life / poor adoption / compliance failure / platform consolidation)
  • [Low] Are there internal champions or skeptics whose concerns should be addressed early in the evaluation?

Scale & Growth ​

  • [High] How many active learners does the organization expect to support at launch? In Year 3?
  • [High] What is the expected peak concurrent user count? (This drives infrastructure and scalability requirements more than total enrollment.)
  • [High] How many courses or learning programs are expected at launch? In Year 3?
  • [Medium] Will learner growth be organic/linear or could there be sudden spikes? (e.g., open enrollment periods, promotional launches, mandatory compliance deadlines)
  • [Medium] Is multi-tenancy or multi-organizational support required? (e.g., separate branded experiences for different departments, subsidiaries, or partner organizations)

Content & Curriculum ​

  • [High] Who will be creating course content — L&D/instructional designers, subject matter experts (SMEs), instructors, or all of the above?
  • [High] What types of content must the platform support? (Video / SCORM / xAPI / PDFs / live sessions / coding exercises / simulations / interactive H5P / assessments)
  • [High] Is there existing course content that needs to be migrated? If so, in what formats and approximately how many courses?
  • [Medium] Is AI-assisted content authoring a desired feature, or a nice-to-have?
  • [Medium] Will the organization need a pre-built off-the-shelf course library, or is all content custom-built?
  • [Low] Are cohort-based learning experiences (shared schedules, peer deadlines) required, or is self-paced sufficient?

Learner Experience & Accessibility ​

  • [High] Is WCAG 2.1 AA or Section 508 compliance a hard requirement? (Common in US higher ed, government, and enterprise with legal/compliance exposure)
  • [High] What devices must the platform support? (Desktop only / mobile-responsive web / native iOS and Android app required)
  • [Medium] Are offline or low-bandwidth learning modes required? (Critical for frontline workers, international deployments, or mobile-first learner populations)
  • [Medium] Is multi-language or localized UI support needed? How many languages?
  • [Medium] Are personalized learning paths or adaptive content delivery required, or is a fixed curriculum sufficient?
  • [Low] Are gamification features (points, badges, leaderboards) expected or valued by learners?

Assessment & Credentialing ​

  • [High] What types of assessments are required? (Multiple choice / short answer / file submission / peer review / proctored exams / coding challenges / project-based)
  • [High] Does the organization need to issue certificates or digital badges? If so, must they be verifiable externally (e.g., Credly/Open Badges)?
  • [Medium] Are rubric-based grading and instructor feedback tools required?
  • [Medium] Is automated grading (for objective assessments) a critical feature?
  • [Low] Is proctoring integration (ProctorU, Honorlock, etc.) required for high-stakes assessments?
  • [Low] Is competency-based education (CBE) or mastery-based progression required?

Collaboration & Community ​

  • [High] Are discussion forums or peer interaction features required within courses?
  • [Medium] Are live virtual sessions (Zoom, Teams, webinar) required and must they be embedded in the platform, or is an external integration acceptable?
  • [Medium] Is a social community layer (profiles, feeds, groups beyond course-level) a requirement?
  • [Low] Is peer review or collaborative project work a common pedagogy in the organization?
  • [Low] Is user-generated content (employees/learners creating and sharing knowledge) a desired capability?

Analytics & Reporting ​

  • [High] What reporting is minimally required at launch? (Completion rates / individual progress / compliance audit exports / assessment performance)
  • [High] Are there regulatory or accreditation reporting requirements the platform must support? (e.g., SACSCOC, HLC, ACCJC for higher ed; HR compliance exports for enterprise)
  • [Medium] Does the organization have a data warehouse or BI tool (Snowflake, BigQuery, Tableau, Power BI) that learning data must feed into?
  • [Medium] Is a skills tracking / competency framework layer required that links learning activity to skill development?
  • [Low] Is predictive analytics (at-risk learner detection, completion probability) a desired feature?
  • [Low] Does the organization want to correlate learning data with business outcomes (retention, product adoption, performance reviews)?

Integration & Technical Requirements ​

  • [High] Does the organization have a Student Information System (SIS) or HRIS that must integrate with the platform? (Banner, PeopleSoft, Workday, BambooHR, SAP SuccessFactors)
  • [High] Is Single Sign-On (SSO) required? What identity provider is in use? (Azure AD / Okta / Shibboleth / Google Workspace / custom SAML)
  • [High] Are LTI-connected external tools required? (Turnitin, Zoom, proctoring, publisher content, coding environments)
  • [Medium] Is a CRM integration required? (Salesforce is most common — especially relevant for customer education use cases)
  • [Medium] Does the organization require an open API for custom integrations or internal automation?
  • [Low] Are there specific marketplace connectors needed? (Content providers, HR tools, communication tools)

Security, Compliance & Data ​

  • [High] What data privacy regulations apply? (FERPA for US higher ed / COPPA for K-12 / GDPR for EU / HIPAA for healthcare)
  • [High] Are there data residency requirements? (Must data remain in the US / specific country / specific cloud region)
  • [High] What security certifications are required from the vendor? (SOC 2 Type II / ISO 27001 / FedRAMP for government)
  • [Medium] What are the organization's requirements for data portability and export at contract end?
  • [Medium] Are there audit trail or activity logging requirements for compliance or legal purposes?
  • [Low] Is penetration testing documentation required from the vendor?

Deployment & Infrastructure ​

  • [High] Is SaaS the only acceptable deployment model, or is self-hosted or on-premise an option?
  • [Medium] If SaaS, does the organization have a preferred cloud provider? (Some institutions have existing AWS/Azure/GCP agreements or data processing commitments)
  • [Medium] What is the minimum acceptable uptime SLA? (Higher ed typically requires ≥99.9%; enterprise compliance may require 99.95%+)
  • [Low] Are there disaster recovery or business continuity requirements (RTO/RPO targets)?

Implementation & Timeline ​

  • [High] What is the target go-live date, and are there hard deadlines tied to academic calendar, contract renewals, or compliance requirements?
  • [High] Does the organization have internal technical staff to manage implementation, or is fully managed deployment required?
  • [Medium] Is a sandbox/staging environment required during implementation for testing before go-live?
  • [Medium] Will end users (instructors, learners, admins) need formal training as part of the implementation scope?
  • [Low] Is the organization open to a phased rollout, or is full deployment at launch expected?

Budget & Commercial Considerations ​

  • [High] Is there an established total budget (annual or total contract value) for this platform?
  • [High] Is per-seat pricing, usage-based pricing, or flat-fee pricing preferred? Are there concerns about cost predictability as scale grows?
  • [Medium] Is a multi-year contract acceptable, or is flexibility to exit annually required?
  • [Medium] What are the expectations around data export and exit rights at contract termination?
  • [Low] Are there existing vendor relationships or procurement frameworks (state contracts, cooperative purchasing agreements like E&I, NASPO) that could simplify contracting?

Mapping Answers to Scoring Weights ​

Once stakeholder answers are gathered, use this table to adjust the default weights in 03-scoring-framework.md:

Stakeholder AnswerWeight Adjustment
WCAG/Section 508 is a legal hard requirementTreat Security, Compliance & Accessibility as a hard filter; set WCAG criterion to non-negotiable
SaaS only is acceptableSet Infrastructure > self-hosted criteria to 0; reduce Infrastructure category weight
No existing LMS to migrateSet Implementation > migration criteria to 0
Budget is the primary constraintIncrease all Pricing & Commercial Terms weights to 1.0
No internal technical staffIncrease Implementation & Onboarding and Support & Service weights
HRIS integration is requiredIncrease Integration > HRIS criterion to 1.0
Compliance training is primary use caseIncrease Assessment & Analytics categories; increase Security category
AI authoring is a must-haveIncrease Content & Curriculum Authoring > AI authoring criterion to 1.0
Customer/external education is the use caseIncrease Pricing > e-commerce, Integration > CRM criteria
Frontline/deskless worker populationIncrease Mobile, Offline, UGC criteria weights
Academic institution with accreditation needsIncrease Analytics > accreditation reporting, Assessment criteria
Open-source platform preferredIncrease Vendor & Platform Viability > open-source posture criterion

Schema Education — Internal Research