COPING WITH BOUNDARIES AND OVERLAPPING BETWEEN CMS, LMS AND LCMS SYSTEMS

Abstract

When a university or an organization wants to offer a program of online courses and online collaborative spaces, one of the major decisions concerns the virtual environment - VLE - Virtual Learning Environment or LMS. This decision is quite difficult to make because looking for an online training system we may get stuck choosing between two similar-sounding, but ultimately different systems: Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). Coping with the boundaries between the two, means to be aware of the key differences and similarities those organizations should keep in mind when looking to add e-learning elements to their training programs. This paper aims to make some conceptual and functional clarifications of the terms in order to cover a comparative analysis of the possibilities of using these systems in the context of an extremely dynamic educational environment and market. UNDERSTAND THE TERMS Using e-learning techniques are a credible and effective response to the challenges of the current educational environment. It can be motivating for users to participate, given the advantages they offer: access to a wide array of formative approaches and supple and flexible learning strategies (active pedagogy, participatory training, meta knowledge, learning focused on problems, games, and conflict resolution, etc..) diversified assessment (self-assessment, formative assessment, summative or certificate etc..) asynchronous approach in time and space via the Internet, dynamic content, collaborative environment, feedback, low cost. These facts are common nowadays and generally accepted, and anyone located on the improvement road seems to recognise the strategic importance and the educational opportunities of formal and ongoing training supported by different type of e-learning systems: CMS, LMS or LCMS. LMS: A platform for managing people A Learning Management System is a software package hosted on the server, and intended for the development, management and delivery of courses and training programs. It provides the platform for managing the experience of students or trainees as they interact with e-learning content. In this case the e-learning content has already been created, and more than that, it is in the right format to be compatible with the LMS system. The services provided by an LMS generally include access control, synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, management of user groups. The following main characteristics of an LMS system could be considered: o emphasis on registering participants, tracking their activity, and gauging their progress through online coursework; o interaction with existing human resource information systems, to track the pool of those eligible for participation, and for reporting back outcomes; o analytics and performance management tools. An LMS can equally be seen as: - a specialized pedagogical content management system - editing and distribution of educational content, the ordering of training modules, training and evaluation management; LMS users are mainly trainees, guided by trainers and tutors; the primary objective of LMS is to deliver and manage training support, focusing especially around courses and less on their content; the limits of such a system are given by the difficulty of creating, modifying or reuse of the content.