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| | PRINT | | LMS - LCMS - Authoring Tools |
 Berlin, August 2005 – (by Stephan Heil, Eedo) Time has passed and learning management systems (LMS) have evolved into complex applications dealing with wider issues now than the mere distribution of eLearning courses to a user base. In fact it could be said that an LMS does not necessarily need to deploy eLearning courses to deserve its name.
An average LMS can now deal with the management of all processes related to training delivery in an organization. This ranges from complex enrolment procedures, through mapping of role-specific competency profiles against a user’s actual competence, to the scheduling and management of physical rooms, tutors, and resources (online and off). Often a facility for either synchronous or asynchronous communication - or both - between students and tutors is also included.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations that just want to develop and deploy eLearning courses to find a platform that suits their needs. This applies anywhere where learning does not occur as part of a structured, well planned, approved personnel development strategy but instead is seen as an inherent part of the working process. Managing the continuous life cycle of creating, deploying, and maintaining mission-critical knowledge resources clearly demands another type of system.
This is particularly so since the one thing Learning Management Systems don’t help you with is the development of learning content - a task that for a long time was left to scores of young programmers who were putting together courses on a page-by-page basis in pure HTML and java script, all using their unique genius and style of programming.
Creating Content
Out of that gap in the traditional learning platform technology, a plethora of specialist authoring programs and what has come to be known as “Rapid eLearning tools” have arisen. All promise non-technical trainers and course designers quick and painless development of eLearning resources.
As always there is a trade-off between flexibility and ease of use. The early generation of authoring tools such as Toolbook and Authorware still stem from the pre-online era when eLearning was called interactive multimedia training and was distributed mainly on CD ROM. These tools are infinitely flexible but require a great deal of programming (albeit not necessarily code writing) to get anything produced that could be called a decent eLearning resource.
Other tools put the emphasis on simplicity but generate a highly standardized formulaic output that often does not meet the more advanced requirements an enterprise may develop over time. While the better authoring tools actually allow an individual developer to produce very attractive and interactive courses with relative ease, deal with the SCORM packaging, and shelter the course designer from having to deal with programming issues such as page and module navigation, they hardly address an organization’s typical content development pain points, which can include:
- finding content already available in an organization
- adapting and reusing existing components seamlessly in new courses
- ensuring consistency in instructional design and layout across all courses (which may be developed by various teams at different times in different places)
- ensuring the deployed content is kept accurate and up to date throughout its life cycle
- avoiding duplication and minimizing costs for content creation
- managing an approval workflow that may involve a number of different stakeholders and departments
- deploying the same content in multiple formats depending on the audience’s requirements and means of access
- managing external content suppliers and being able to reuse and maintain their deliverables across the organization thus capitalizing on the investment made in content
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This is the domain of Learning Content Management Systems. Bryan Chapman, author of Brandon Hall’s comparative study on Enterprise Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS), describes an LCMS like this: "Where a typical LMS might simply track and organize learners and training, a full-fledged LCMS is designed to manage the creation, storage, reuse, and delivery of eLearning content from a central object repository - everything from conception to delivery."
The key to achieving this is a systematic separation of content from format and presentation style. Usually LCMSs use a central database-managed repository in which all content is stored in an object-based format and to which designers, developers, and managers all have access. Each object, be it a graphic, a piece of text, or a multiple choice question, can have its own metadata, so it can be searched, identified, and reused in a different context if applicable.
Coping with Change
This all sounds terribly academic but when applied day to day, it actually makes a lot of good practical sense. Anyone who has ever lived through the full life cycle of a larger content development project will appreciate that the speed with which things can be assembled is secondary to the ease with which it can be updated and maintained in the long run - particularly if there are multiple derivative versions and languages of each course that have been adapted for specific audiences.
A small change can easily explode into a major project as it is replicated through all versions, which often exist in various repositories of the organization - in the worst case on the hard drive of a developer who has recently left the company.
Dynamic Delivery
The less advanced LCMSs go only half way in addressing this problem effectively by exporting a physical SCORM, AICC or other specified content package at the end of the development process, thereby detaching the live deployed content from the repository. What is lost is the ability to keep content, which is often deployed through multiple portals and potentially different LMSs throughout an organization, in sync with the rapid changes inherent in most organizations.
More sophisticated systems offer the option for dynamic delivery. This means that the content actually stays in its object-based format in the central repository and individual pages are only assembled at the very moment they are called up by a user. The result: change things in one place instead of many and the changes take effect instantaneously rather than after a lengthy export – distribute - import process.
What is the right system for your organization?
First it has to be said that the classes of systems described above are by no means exclusive and can work happily in conjunction. In fact large organizations will use all of them at one time or another. The issue becomes clouded further by the fact that many LMSs are now offering some kind of limited content authoring facility and most LCMSs offer some degree of learning management functionality.
Therefore let’s look at two different scenarios:
Scenario One: Choosing the right technology to introduce eLearning in an organization
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