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1. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
by Donato Mangialardo
Introduction
In today’s corporate world, organizations are strengthening their focus on learning content management, rapid and
massive content production, the ‘searchability’ of content, version control, content reuse and interoperability with
other business systems.
Learning content management needs vary widely from company to company. Some companies are well served by a
combination of social and collaboration platforms, portals and lightweight content management functionalities. Others
are well served by the full-featured learning management systems (LMSs) on the market. However, enterprise-wide
initiatives that touch several departments and need to talk to various business systems within a distributed organiza-
tion need a best-of-breed, industrial-strength learning content management system (LCMS) that has been built from
the ground up with the technology and the standards to solve specific business problems - just as ERP, CRM and HRIS
do in other areas of the enterprise.
Brandon Hall Research mentions: ‘We’ve seen organizations large and small use LCMS technologies to successfully
engage and leverage subject matter experts and novice developers as primary contributors to large-scale projects de-
signed to collect and disseminate knowledge throughout the organization. “We’ve watched companies that have com-
pletely transformed their costly in-house development practice into a well-organized, eLearning publishing machine.”
Bersin and Associates also say: “Proponents [of LCMS] sing the benefits of collaborative authoring, content reuse and
the ability to author once and publish to multiple formats (eLearning, print, and classroom materials). And we have
spoken with many large companies that have seen amazing benefits from these systems.”
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2. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
LMS versus LCMS
To understand overlaps and differences between an LMS and LCMS, we need to review a few key points.
An LMS is learner–centric. It focuses on eLearning process management and content delivery. In essence, an LMS is software
for planning, delivering and managing learning events within an organization, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-
led courses. For example, an LMS can simplify global certification efforts, enable entities to align learning initiatives with strate-
gic goals and provide a means of enterprise-level skills management.
The focus of an LMS is to manage students, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activi-
ties. It performs administrative tasks, such as reporting to instructors, HR and other ERP systems but it isn’t used to create
course content.
An LCMS is content–centric. Here, the focus is on the authoring and management of eLearning reusable content. By contrast,
LCMS solutions are ideally suited to create content-centric learning strategies, supporting multiple methods for gathering and
organizing content, leveraging content for multiple purposes, and operation for mission critical purposes. 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.
Rather than developing entire courses and adapting them to multiple audiences, an LCMS is designed for managing learning
content across an organization’s various training development areas. It provides developers, authors, instructional designers, and
subject matter experts the means to create and re-use eLearning content and reduce duplicated development efforts.
An LCMS provides the ability for single course instances to be modified and republished for various audiences maintaining
versions and history. The objects stored in the centralized repository can be made available to course developers and content
experts throughout an organization for potential reuse and repurpose. This allows for the rapid assembly of customized content.
In addition, Brandan Hall believes that: “when LCMS technology is appropriately applied and matched to an orchestrated eLearn-
ing strategy, with a complete instructional design plan for designing and using learning objects, great efficiencies can and will be
achieved, such as:
• The ability to make instantaneous, company-wide changes to critical learning content
• Rapid and productive content development efforts
• Seamless collaboration among subject matter experts and course designers
• The ability to create multiple, derivative versions of content applicable to different audiences from senior manage-
ment to line-level workers
• Access to find and reuse learning content, ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just enough’
• Ultimate reusability of content by making it available through a wide array of output types such as structured e-l
• eLearning courses, CD-ROM courses, learning material available from a Palm device or PocketPC, print-based
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3. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
Essential Features for an LCMS
To achieve the benefits outlined above, companies need to screen and shortlist their vendors carefully, according to a well-
defined strategy - as opposed to specific feature sets. It is not just about software. It is about choosing a business partner that
can offer products based on a future-proof technology - with a strong focus on what they do. Moreover, that partner need to
offer professional services that are able to deliver the required changes and even re-engineer the learning content management
life-cycle and production methodology.
That said, here is a list of capabilities that we know an LCMS must have in order to deliver on its promise:
• Legacy content ingestion, indexing and storage
It must be able to accept, ingest and index pre-existing content from a wide variety of sources, such as Word, PowerPoint,
Flash, raw media files and other forms of legacy content.
It must be able to move content from a stack of unrelated knowledge parts to a coherent and sustainable course/training/
professional enhancement objective. Any digital resource or even existing content packages should be able to be imported
from the file system, external databases and third-party applications, to enable the reuse of previous eLearning invest-
ments - including content already packaged in LMS-delivered courses. Without this, there is no easy way to approach or
even devise a content-centric strategy.
• Rapid authoring and assembly capabilities and model-based automation of content production
Fast-paced organizations that need to meet high-volume, professional and consistent learning output demand need both
rapid authoring and assembly capabilities as well as model-based automation of content production in different languages
that can be delivered on different channels and platforms.
Professional content creation to meet any quality need requires the ability to produce sophisticated, highly interactive and
high-quality instructional content that is also consistent in terms of its pedagogical approach and visual representation.
The LCMS also needs to have dynamic pre-testing capabilities and the ability to create adaptive learning based on pre-test
performance.
• Maximum reusability of learning content
Content must be able to be reused in several ways. This includes being able to reuse entire topics in other courses; use
parts of topics (modules, units) in other courses; reuse an entire course; make changes and republish; localize without du-
plicating content, and above all, the ability to reuse source material for a wide variety of output channels including eLearn-
ing, print-based learning and mobile devices.
• Interoperability with LMS and Business Systems
The LCMS must have an open architecture (SOA) and complete web services for functional extension, investment protec-
tion as well as future-proof integration with any business system and LMSs (the latter also requires compliance with the
standards set out below).
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4. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
It must follow 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. This is essential for interoperability with other systems such as HR
and talent management systems.
• Project Management
The LCMS must also manage the workflow process of eLearning development, such as role-based systems, task assign-
ments, project management tools, collaboration tools for content developers, built-in bug tracking, event-based notification
engine, and so on.
• Content Management
Common – but still important - characteristics of any LCMS include:
• Having a learning object model approach – for easy, rapid and efficient content creation
• Business process-driven content categorization (metadata, tagging, taxonomies), which enables authors to search
and find the right material quickly
• Advanced archiving, file management and revision control
• A standards-based localization engine – for the creation and delivery of multi-language content
• Single source, multiple output
Pure-play LCMS for Successful Content-centric, Mission Critical Initiatives
Enterprise-wide initiatives that touch several departments and need to communicate with various business systems within a
distributed organization need a best-of-breed, industrial-strength LCMS that has been built from the ground up with the technol-
ogy and the standards to solve specific business problems. This is because:
• Best-of- breed approach. Your way to deliver training and learning content may change to adapt to new business needs.
As an example, you may want to enable just in time mobile delivery, manage content chunks for content personalization or
multiple channel publication or distribution. Like any system, an LMS may become insufficient. Inevitably, eventually, it will
become insufficient for your needs.
As Elliott Masie mentions in his blog: “Many of our Learning Consortium members are in the midst of re-evaluating their
LMS and LCMS. Some are shocked that this point of re-evaluation has arrived only 36 or 42 months after the original pur-
chase point.” Having delivery (LMS) decoupled from the core learning content management (LCMS) enables these changes
to happen quickly and in a controlled manner for a future-proof learning and knowledge organization.
• Content-centric versus User-centric. We have seen waves of LMSs claiming new features to escape from commoditization.
However, a system that is built from the ground up to manage content as opposed to users (learners) has a unique, differ-
ent underlying structure and technology. This underlying structure will include an XML-based engine, workflows and meta-
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5. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
data structures; single source multi channel engines and template-based authoring engine. This is often invisible to many
people. As an example, the vast majority of LMS/LCMSs are based on proprietary models (that is, they are ‘non-XML’). This
limits the power and interoperability required to adapt to the various delivery channels and technologies. By contrast, pure-
play LCMSs are based on XML. They are thus platform-independent, allowing organizations to meet the various blended,
ILT, WBT, mobile and other emerging formats with flexibility and significant return on investment (ROI).
• Production-centric versus distribution centric. LMSs are focused on users and the distribution of content. Even if a few
- well known and recognized - LMSs have added LCMS functionalities, this does not mean that they are effective and ef-
ficient at doing what an LCMS is supposed to deliver: notably, to adapt to and improve business processes for massive and
rapid content development.
In LMSs, learning content is created systematically and structured as courses used for specific learning purposes. Content
developers and contributors may have to work through lengthy cycles to submit content to the system for distribution.
Content creation projects, project collaboration across multiple teams and geographies, versioning and localization may
end up as huge bottlenecks. LCMSs are industrial strength systems that are built precisely to solve these problems, from
the ground up.
• Just-in-time. At some point your content will be ‘trapped’ in a LMS-based system and encumbered by embedded naviga-
tional controls. These require manual work to be repurposed to create new courses. In a pure-play LCMS, you can simply
reuse the ‘pure’ source learning content and create the derivative versions, which will be updated when the source is
changed, in a fully controlled manner.
• Strategy with a methodology behind it. A content-centric model of learning allows leveraging learning content as strate-
gic assets across departments, as well as leveraging this content to connect learning with the organization’s bottom-line.
This model does not come ‘for free’. Besides a strategy you need a methodology that re-engineers your learning content
management life-cycle.
You also need a production methodology, such as XML-based learning objects and full scale template-based approaches,
multi language re-versioning and standards-based packaging for massive and rapid content production, as well as dynam-
ic publishing across different LCMS and LMS solutions. Such a methodology must come from an LCMS provider that has
centred its business, with several success stories, on this very technology and methodology. It’s not purely about products.
• LCMS as a business system. While LMSs - with or without LCMS capabilities - are always the preserve of learning profes-
sionals (and nobody else), business systems such as ERP, CRM and HR are known by everybody, because they are key to
the business. When your LCMS solution and content-centric learning strategy are in place, people across the company
will create, share and consume learning content, even though they don’t know what ‘LCMS’ stands for, and even though
they don’t work in the training department. This is what an LCMS should aim to be. It’s not just a component of a learning
ecosystem. It relates to the bottom-line in a measurable manner.
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6. Pure Play LCMS: an Increasingly Attractive Solution
References:
• Brandon Hall Knowledgebase
• Bersin & Associates website
• Elliott Masie’s Learning TRENDS. Learning, Training, Technology & Change
• LCMS, not just a Technology: It’s a Strategy! A Chapman Alliance White Paper/April 2009. By Bryan Chapman, Chief Learn-
ing Strategist
• eXact learning solution experts
About the Author
Donato Mangialardo is the Director of Marketing and Product Strategy at eXact learning solutions. Mangialardo possesses extensive international experience,
guiding enterprise software products in multinational organizations, and has held several key, hi-tech marketing roles within enterprise software and SaaS
companies.
eXact learning solutions
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