Elearning - February/March 2008 - (Page 33) Establishing an EnterpriseWide LMS/LCMS IT’S MORE THAN PURCHASING AND INSTALLING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS. BY LANCE DUBLIN Organizations today are faced with everchanging business requirements and the needs of an increasingly diverse and, often, dispersed learner population. Increasingly, learning is being recognized as critical to their future success, if not survival. Organizations therefore are looking for ways to leverage technology to not only deliver, manage and report on learning activities, but also to create learning activities and manage the learning assets. A learning management system (LMS) is a system that enables an organization to deliver, manage, track, record and report on instructor-led and online learning activities. A learning content management system (LCMS) is a system that enables multiple developers to create learning content (such as activities) and enables the organization to store, reuse, manage and deliver learning content from a central repository or database. These two systems are designed to work in concert, but an organization can choose to implement either one of them independently. STAGES OF EVOLUTION Automating the administrative processes that surround instructor-led training is typically the first stage in an organization’s evolution to a true enterprise LMS/LCMS. Using technology as a platform for elearning is typically the next stage. Most organizations establish their goal in this stage to save money while making more learning available to more people. The focus is on off-the-shelf and custom e-learning courses as well as blended learning programs that combine online with instructor-led activities. The third stage is implementing and managing the LMS/LCMS as a corporate or enterprise-wide application. In this Elearning! Februasry/March 2008 33
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