eXact learning solutions reveals industry trends - and buyers' confusion over LCMSs
Research from eXact learning solutions has revealed that the major trends in corporate learning today are: organisations are strengthening their focus on learning content management; the adoption of rapid content production; the growing importance of 'searchability' of content, version control, content reuse and interoperability of learning content management systems (LCMSs) with other business systems.
Research from eXact learning solutions, a leading online and mobile learning content management and digital repository solution provider, has revealed that the major trends in corporate learning today are:
• organisations are strengthening their focus on learning content management,
• the adoption of rapid content production,
• the growing importance of ‘searchability’ of content, version control, content reuse and interoperability of learning content management systems (LCMSs) with other business systems.
According to Donato Mangialardo, Director of Marketing and Product Strategy at eXact learning solutions, there is also some confusion in the market between the characteristics and use of LCMSs and learning management systems (LMSs).
“An LMS focuses on e-learning process management and content delivery,” said Mangialardo. “An LMS is software for planning, delivering and managing learning events within an organisation, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-led courses.
“The focus of an LMS is to manage students, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. It performs administrative tasks, such as reporting to instructors, HR and other ERP systems but it isn’t used to create course content.
“On the other hand, an LCMS focuses on the authoring and management of e-learning reusable content. LCMS technology can either be used in tandem with an LMS, or as a standalone application for learning initiatives that require rapid development and distribution of learning content.
“An LCMS is designed for managing learning content across an organisation's training development areas,” he continued. “It provides developers, authors, instructional designers, and subject matter experts with the means to create and re-use e-learning content and reduce duplicated development efforts.”
In Mangialardo’s opinion, an LCMS must offer:
• Legacy content ingestion, indexing and storage - accepting pre-existing content from sources, such as Word, PowerPoint, Flash, raw media files and other forms of legacy content. Any digital resource or existing content should be able to be imported from the file system, external databases and third-party applications, to enable its reuse.
• Interoperability with LMS and business systems – following industry standards including IMS Content Packaging, IMS QTI Lite (for assessments) and SCORM 1.2 / SCORM 2004 specifications. Content needs to be described (indexed) according to IEEE IMS 1.2 or LOM metadata format, and according to IMS VDEX for content classification.
• Rapid authoring and assembly capabilities and model-based automation of content production
• The maximum reusability of learning content
• Project Management
• Content Management
“There are two main integration strategies between LCMS and LMS solutions that are widely adopted,” explained Mangialardo. “The first is where content packages and resources are manually moved (published) in batches from the LCMS to a third party LMS by using the file system.
“It’s straightforward because compatibility is assured by the compliance to learning standards such as SCORM of both the LCMS and LMS. This publication mechanism can be easily automated as well.
“However, we’ve noticed that this common integration strategy doesn’t really address the need for a content-centric solution within a distributed architecture,” he added. “The best solution is a single digital repository (single source) with distributed content management, implemented by what we call ‘level 3 dynamic linking and publishing’ integration in our LCMS solution.”
The whitepaper is available for download at (registration is needed): http://www.exact-learning.com/en/resources/whitepapers
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