The significant leap in learning and training methods has enabled continuous improvements in learning systems and methodology. With the ubiquitous popularity and prevalence of eLearning, Education and Training related domains are aspiring towards deploying effective systems to impart high quality education along with periodic interaction between the teacher and the student.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) are gaining increased acceptance from most of the leading Academic Publishers, Professional Associations, Corporate Training Bodies and Institutions involved in all leading exam preparations and certifications.

The continuous development of many software packages has managed to make the differences between LMS and LCMS appear subtle. A deeper understanding of these two options however would reveal some major variations in creation and application.

Whereas LMS focuses more on students’ registration and participation to track progress and activity, the underlying principle here is that the format and content has already been created, also facilitating the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) and Talent Management.

LCMS on the contrary focuses more on creating, developing and managing content that offers a platform for developers to interact and exchange tools. This facilitates a robust content portfolio which can typically encompass all the learning that has been absorbed by the trainers or teachers by suitably modifying the content to be enhanced with such experiences.

Myth: LMSs and LCMSs are time consuming and expensive for ambitious managements!

Reality:  LMSs and LCMSs constitute the best Return on Investment when assessing  efforts put in by the organization in the areas of Learning and Development!

Applications of LMS and LCMS

The phenomenal growth in Mobile Apps seen during the past few years has resulted in a game-changing scenario in learning methods and techniques.

• Leading publishers worldwide are increasingly coming up with digital applications with a comprehensive array of products catering to a broader audience. The facility to get real time data on usage directly results in effective correlation of content and outcome to optimize content.
• Professional associations and other bodies providing credentials, use products that are outcome-driven to meet the goals of today’s professionals leveraging unified data, for certification or recertification programs.
• Mobile and game based products are increasingly being developed to complement the existing set of products by the largest exam preparation companies.
• Corporate training companies and in-house departments of corporate houses increasingly employ LCMS to provide a high degree of training content and facilities, thereby improving the morale, and driving employee satisfaction.

Basic rules for success in LMSs and LCMSs

 

1. Gone are the days when having your own staff running your own servers behind your own firewall helped provide a sense of security and control. Cloud computing is emerging as an inexpensive, quick and efficient way of delivering training through LMS and LCMS. Cloud-based LMSs and LCMSs have the capacity to bring down Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), something that is largely overlooked during LMS/LCMS vendor comparisons. The future LMSs and LCMSs will increasingly be run on cloud for their agile, flexible and economic characteristics. This trend will benefit not only large companies but even the smallest of the learning organizations.
2. An interface that can be manipulated to meet end-user’s needs and preferences – like freedom to bring blog, YouTube, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn forms at one place for viewing – which they can utilize to develop and hone expertise anytime, anyplace.
3. A semantic search function that understands and tracks user’s search intention and context.
4. The PLE that would know learners’ interests and gaps in knowledge and skills and proactively suggest new information, courses, social communities and network for consideration.
5. Facility for user-based content generation, to contribute knowledge and expertise through conversation and new content.

Future of LMS and LCMS

 

The learning management system market was worth an estimated $2.55 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow approximately to $4 billion in 2015, and over $7 billion in 2018. More and more companies are using LMSs and LCMSs to make their training and employee management more effective.

 

Krish and Dass Kishore