Need a Learning Content Management System (LCMS)?
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By Bob Goldschneider, Director of Business Development at SyberWorks, Inc.
You know the old saying, give a busy person a job to do and its gets done - so yes, you have been tasked with finding a learning management system for your company. You’re stretched for time, so you do a search in Google and pull up a generic RFP document and you think, “Okay, just need to review this, make some changes and I am set.”
You start plowing through the document and see the words ‘learning content management system.’ You think, yeah, sure, that sounds good…but do you really need that? In most cases, you do not.
A basic definition of a learning content management system implies that the system has authoring application, a data repository, a delivery interface, and administration tools-many of the things you find in a full-featured learning management system. Some LCMSs have collaboration tools, including chat, integrated email, and threaded discussion groups. Again, these are all features you can find in a robust learning management system. In fact, many of the features found in a LCMS have been incorporated in a full-featured LMS. The most salient features of a LCMS, are those focused on the development, management and publishing of the content that will typically be delivered via an LMS.
Figure 1
Organizations that truly need a LCMS are ones that have many collaborators in the development of training courses. These collaborators (co-authors) need access to the material under development by other content authors. An LCMS provides developers, authors, instructional designers, and subject matter experts the means to create and re-use learning content and reduce duplicated development efforts.
As shown in Figure 1 above, seven modules make up the three courses for Electrical Circuits training. The learning modules residing in the Content Repository (Directories) can be re-purposed into a number of courses that may be assembled by the LMS as courses to be taken in a specific order (pre-requite order) or all modules could be included in one course as shown in Figure 2 below. These courses may be targeted at different audiences with different job roles.
Figure 2
An LMS and an LCMS complement each other and don’t necessarily replace each other. As previously stated, LMSs have several features traditionally fulfilled by an LCMS. The important thing here is that you have done a full evaluation of your company's training and certification needs. The evaluation should consist of a needs assessment where you have investigated and hashed out the company's course development strategies to understand what types of tools you need to produce your training. You must understand who is tasked with developing training at your organization and how it is to be constructed. If you have a good understanding of your own processes and what the system needs to do you won't be paying for functionality you don't need.
About the Author:
Bob Goldschneider has over 30 years experience in corporate training and educational services. He has served as Director of Educational Services and Director of North American Sales and Service for the Open Software Foundation. He built their Educational Services division from the ground up into a multi-million dollar business. He also served as Director of Educational Services at Apollo Computer and Training Development Manager for Wang Laboratories, where he managed a staff of over 50 instructors, course developers, video producers, and graphic designers.
About SyberWorks
SyberWorks, Inc. is a leader in providing Learning Management Systems and custom e-Learning Solutions for Fortune 1000 corporations, higher education, and other organizations. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions for creating, managing, measuring, and improving e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries.
