lms 101: part i · tincan/xapi) as well as outputs to straight html5 and pdf. adobe flash is a...

© 2016 eLogic Learning. All Rights Reserved.

LMS 101: Part I LMS vs LCMS

(813) 901-8600 | [email protected] | elogiclearning.com



Overview 3

What is an LCMS? 4

LCMS Features 6

Differences Between an LCMS and LMS 8

Real-World Examples 9

BONUS: What to Look for in an LCMS 12

Conclusion 16

About eLogic Learning 17

page 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS


One of the many things that I love about being a Solution

Architect in eLearning is the occasional opportunity to take

my “demo” hat off and help a customer understand the

eLearning world. One of the issues I run into most frequently

is the confusion first time or new learning management

system (LMS) buyers have concerning what an LMS is and/or

what is does.

They know they need online training and believe that

everything they’ll need (namely content) comes with an LMS.

However, in most cases it doesn’t. That’s where an LCMS

comes into play. In this post, I’ll discuss what an LCMS is and

the differences between it and an LMS.

- Brad Newell, Solution Architect at eLogic Learning

page 3

OVERVIEW


What is the size of the LMS market?

LCMS stands for Learning Content Management System. The main difference between an LMS and an

LCMS is the the “C” which stands for content. That one little letter makes all the difference in the

world. An LCMS is software that builds content, and ultimately SCORM or TinCan/xAPI packages, for

use within an LMS. (We’ll discuss SCORM and TinCan in a future blog.)

Let’s say you’re a retail organization with a new promotion that you need to train employees on or a

manufacturer that has a new product it needs to educate its distributors on. You can build a

PowerPoint, but how do you get into the user’s hands and report on it? That’s the job of the LMS! It’s

built to distribute content and track the registrations and completions of the people who take the

courses.

Now, you may quickly realize a plain PowerPoint doesn’t actually track if the user viewed all of the

slides. Or, maybe you want to add an exam and allow the user to return to where they left off. That’s

the job of the LCMS and that’s not all it can do.

page 4

What is an LCMS?


What is the size of the LMS market?

Building a course in an LCMS can be as simple as uploading a PowerPoint or PDF and

automatically creating it as a SCORM package. This is the easy way to get into building

online courses. But most companies eventually begin creating their own graphics,

animations, voice, music, video, text and blend it together to build a course and make it

more engaging for their learners. It’s a natural progression for most companies to move

from PowerPoint to full blown interactive courses. And LCMS’s today give you libraries of

animations, sounds, videos and interactive tools to work with.

After building the course, an LCMS also provides you with some key features that can

help report on the effectiveness and management of the course. We’ll go over these

features next.

page 5

What is an LCMS?


Who Uses an LMS?

Here are a number of features that an LCMS provides:

▶ Designing the Look and Feel of content

– Colors

– Screen size

– Buttons, menus and progress bars

– Fonts and formatting

▶ Navigation through the course

▶ Interactivity

▶ Scoring rules

▶ Completion rules

▶ Asset Management

▶ Review Cycles

page 6

LCMS Features


How is LMS technology delivered?

page 7

For companies that create a lot of content, the last two, Asset Management and Review Cycles, are

probably the most important. The LCMS can tag and organize all of your media assets (video, voice,

music, graphics and even text) so that they can be quickly reused in other courses. Also multiple

authors and SME (Subject Matter Experts) can review the content as it is built, providing editorial and

validation workflows. A LCMS can also quickly import your Word, PDF and PowerPoint files and easily

create them as SCORM packages. In fact, this is how many companies begin to create their own online

courses.

Once the content built in a LCMS, it typically uploaded into a LMS. This is a AICC, SCORM or

TInCan/xAPI package. (We’ll have a discussion on what each of these are in a future blog.) Once in the

LMS, the Administrator of the LMS can create a description, add metadata, and assign it to people

who need to take the content. But the LMS doesn’t “create” the content. In fact, we frequently get

asked if our LMS has an LCMS in it. No, and you don’t want it to either. More on this later.

LCMS Features



page 8

For the visual people, here’s a break down of the basic differences between a LCMS and a LMS:

Differences Between an LCMS and LMS



page 9

I frequently counsel our customers on two things when looking for an LMS:

▶ Keep your content authoring separate from the LMS

▶ Keep your exam creation separate from the LMS

These are the two hardest functions to recreate when switching software systems. In my experience,

most companies will stick with their LCMS much, much longer than their LMS. Why? Though the cost

of LCMS is a fraction of what an LMS costs, the time committed to building the content far outweighs

the time put into managing the LMS.

Let me give you some real-world examples to show you what I mean…

Real-World Examples



page 10

Example #1: Keep your content authoring separate from the LMS

I administered a LMS that generated $1.2 million in revenue a year. I spent about 10 hours a week,

once it was up and running, maintaining the LMS. But our content was constantly being created and

revised as new products and regulations were introduced. And we had over 12 people working on the

content side whereas there was just little ole me as the LMS administrator.

Imagine if all that content was housed in the LMS or another LCMS and then we had to switch to a

new LMS or LCMS. We’d essentially have to recreate all our content!

You see, while most LMSs can rapidly import any historical data, batch upload existing content

(though not always 100%) and create the integrations that are necessary to automate the system, an

LCMS will need to move all of the assets, re-tag and categorize, and rebuild the content using the new

authoring tool and templates. It’s a complex and time-consuming endeavor, which is why keeping the

LCMS separate from your LMS benefits you in the long run.

Real-World Examples



page 11

Example #2: Keep your exam creation separate from the LMS

In fact, I ran into the exact scenario I mentioned on the last page with the aforementioned

company…we wanted to switch LMS vendors as the current vendor was no longer giving us the

support needed for a $1.2 million revenue stream. Problem was, we had 14,000 questions built into

the LMS. The LMS could give me a spreadsheet of the questions, but what about the hotspot

questions, image-based questions, or branching questions? We would’ve had to recreate them in our

new system. Instead, we made sure the LMS was fully SCORM compliant and decided to rebuild all of

our questions, answers and exams in our new LCMS tool.

I don’t wish this process upon anybody as it took far longer to get our content rebuilt (1 year) than to

rebuild an LMS (10 weeks). However, it did help us future-proof the system and allowed us to create

much more complex exams that had branching, reference points and even additional content.

Real-World Examples



page 12

So, now you understand the differences as well as the benefits of a LCMS. But…what should you buy?

That’s the million dollar question and, really, it can only be answered by you and is dependent on your

resources and what you want to create. Here are some basics you’ll need for any LCMS:

Import and Conversion – Ability to rapidly import SCORM, Word, PDF, Excel files into the LCMS and

create SCORM packages.

Library of Assets – Many LCMS’s give you access to their pre-built assets such as graphics, audio,

video, animations, templates and interactions. Make sure that these can be edited, if needed. But also

look for a LCMS that will allow you to upload your own assets and manage them through the system

without having to re-import them for any new course you build. It’s a huge timesaver.

Auditing - Keep track of edits, versions, comments, drafts, and virtually anything else that happens

when creating or editing courses.

What to Look for in an LCMS



page 13

Publishing and Output Types – Make sure the LCMS supports all of the standards (SCORM and

TinCan/xAPI) as well as outputs to straight HTML5 and PDF. Adobe Flash is a dying format because it

doesn’t work on Mobile devices so you must have HTML5 for your interactions, animations, etc. PDF is

always nice because you build simple overviews, job aids, or other support documents based on the

course. Also, make sure you can preview everything in multiple device formats.

Responsive Design – Going along with HTML5 is Responsive Design. What’s this may you ask, we’ll

discuss in depth in a later blog but simply, it’s the ability for content to be displayed on any screen

size. Think about the differences in mobile phone screen sizes. It’s mind boggling how many there are.

A LCMS that automatically builds this into your content is crucial.

Review/Collaboration Capabilities – Ability for Subject Matter Experts (SME) or any type of reviewer

to view the content easily and within context so that the author can make edits quickly and easily

within the LCMS. Also, don’t force the reviewer to take a precious license. Only authors should have to

have a license.




page 14

▶ Timed questions

▶ Feedback for individual distractors

(answers)

▶ Branching – If user answers correctly, give

them question A. If they answer incorrectly,

give them question B.

▶ Reference – Ability to reference in the

content where the answer is. Also, give the

option to take the user to the answer.

▶ Hotspots

▶ Video – Watch a video and answer

questions on it.

▶ Audio – Listen to a mp3 and answer

questions on it.

▶ Matching

▶ Drag and Drop

▶ Matrix questions

▶ Likert Scale

▶ Randomize Questions and Answers

▶ Comprehensive Summary – Not only show

them what they got right and wrong but

take them to the content for retraining.

▶ Fully SCORM Compliant – Many LCMS say

they are. Test it!


Exam/Quiz Tools – Many LCMS tout the ability to create exams or quizzes in their tool. Check to

make sure you can do the following:



page 15

Intergration – One of the largest problems with using a LCMS is exporting the SCORM package. The

package can easily get corrupted or improperly built. This can easily be fixed by integrating with an

LMS. This called PENS (Package Exchange Notification Services). PENS allows a LCMS to publish

directly to the LMS without having to create a SCORM package. To have this, both the LCMS and LMS

need to support it.

Advanced Features - Here are some advanced features that are coming out in LCMS today which

may interest you:

▶ Geo-location for mobile devices

▶ Gesture based navigation for mobile and touch devices.

▶ Storyboarding

▶ TOC and Aggregators

▶ Language Translation – Ability for a use to switch the language to their native one in the content.


© 2016 eLogic Learning. All Rights Reserved. page 16

CONCLUSION

Of all the acronyms thrown around in the Learning Management world, LCMS is probably the least

used yet the most important. It’s the foundation that all online learning is built upon. Picking a good

LCMS is essential as it will become as important as Microsoft Outlook, Word or Excel if you want to

enter the online training world.

While eLogic is focused on developing a world class LMS, we acknowledge the need for an LCMS by

partnering with the dominKnow Platform (provider of the Claro authoring tool) as our LCMS and have

built integrations between the two systems to ease the content upload process. eLogic also has a full

time content development department that can help you get started with templates, guidance and

even full courses built for your organization.

About Brad Newell

Brad has over 20 years’ experience as a content developer, LMS Administrator

and Solution Architect. He has worked on 7 different LMS systems and 5 LCMS

systems. He also managed a LMS that generated over $1.2 million in revenue

a year and oversaw the replacement of multiple LMS systems.

https://www.dominknow.com/dominknow-platform.html

© 2016 eLogic Learning. All Rights Reserved. page 17

▶ Request a live LMS demo with a product specialist

▶ Visit our website for more information

▶ Contact 813-901-8600 or [email protected]

Learn more

eLogic Learning is an award-winning industry leader

in learning management systems, custom course

content and learning strategy development. Founded

in 2001, eLogic provides personalized solutions to

each of its client partners to help their learning and

development efforts succeed.

OUR MISSION “Enriching lives and advancing companies

through training and development.”

OUR PROMISE “Quality. Integrity. Continuous Improvement.

Responsiveness.”

▶ Why We’re Different

Our commitment to fully understanding your business

and objectives is what truly sets us apart. We provide

high-touch implementation and support services that

ensure the eSSential LMS exceeds your expectations

now and in the future. Our agile development process

guarantees clients consistent functionality

enhancements at no additional cost.

▶ We Give Back

We are committed to devoting our time, resources

and efforts to benefit the world around us. That’s why

with each new client or sale, we celebrate our success

by having our employees select a charity where we

donate a portion of the proceeds. It’s our way of

saying thanks and giving back.

ABOUT ELOGIC LEARNING

http://elogiclearning.com/essential-lms/demo-request

http://elogiclearning.com/

http://elogiclearning.com/

mailto:[email protected]

lms 101: part i · tincan/xapi) as well as outputs to straight html5 and pdf. adobe flash is a...

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