What is an LMS, Really?

Background
The notion of a "Learning Management System" or LMS has long dominated the discussion and practice of E-learning. This was understandable at first; an LMS is essentially a large content tracking and delivery mechanism (built atop some database engine). It addressed immediate considerations for automation of learning delivery both for online and classroom education; those considerations included:

• The ability to disseminate CBT and other electronic content over the web.
• The ability to support online course registration / subscription.
• The ability to support learner progress tracking.
• The ability to support some form of online assessment.
  

At the heart of this issue was the desire to provide some type of virtual metaphor for the classroom and the desire to automate a number of traditional, existing processes while simultaneously opening up new channels for education delivery. The LMS helped accomplish some of this, but also acted as a barrier for further innovation by entrenching much of the status quo approach to Learning Management as a process and a philosophy. This has led to a number of resulting issues.

Core Definition
A Learning Management System provides web-based access to Learning Content and various Learning administration capabilities. The exact nature of the content available and the administration features provided varies based upon product vendor. Multiple content standards are utilized, most notably SCORM and AICC. The majority of LMS products have tended to couple content delivery with content / learning assessment and this is also reflected in the standards mentioned.

Variations
The one question that has been continually posed to vendors LMS and e-learning practitioners who view the LMS as the engine that drives a typical enterprise learning solution is this: can or should the LMS adopt a more open content model. This is not a new question, since 2000 many have looked at creating flexible "Learning Object" standards and many vendors have produced solutions that represent hybrid compositions of LMS and Content Management System (CMS) - otherwise known as a "LCMS." Others have extend the LMS in the direction of Performance Management (previously often referred to as competency management). This is a variant that is very focused on assessment.

However, at the same time another crop of solutions - originally referred to as Learning portals started attacking the virtual classroom metaphor more directly. These solutions tend to have some LMS (usually lite) capabilities built-in and are used to deliver learning at universities and other institutions. There a quite a number of ways to refer to them; Virtual Learning Environments, Collaborative Learning Environments, Personal and so forth.

Impact of the LMS
The true impact of the LMS seems to have been an arbitrary imposition of pedagogy on E-learning before such a consolidation of approach was warranted. This means simply that many assumed that there was a right way to provide E-learning before really understanding what their true options were and how those new options might impact the way that learning is managed as a process and an IT solution. Many if not most of us have found web-based technologies to be fairly liberating - we have come to expect that this will always be the case in most instances where traditional activities are made "virtual." This didn't happen in E-learning - with a world of content available to us we restricted ourselves to a very narrow interpretation of what was "appropriate." The content standards and pedagogy imposed by early E-learning solutions prevented them from achieving widespread adoption - this in fact explains why nearly all of the major universities and other educational institutions are now using the Learning Environment paradigm to deliver their offerings instead of the early LMS-driven solutions.

As noted in other posts, E-learning as a practice is and should always have been technology agnostic. In other words, the approach taken to what solution mix to use, what process mix to use what approach to content to use - should be flexible and not bound to any particular technology, product or pedagogy. The E-learning practice is about solving problems, not posturing to determine who is right or what is 'better.'


Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Why E-learning Hasn't Yet Lived up to its Potential

Why did E-learning fail to catch on? There is no doubt that the Elearning
industry as it defines itself came nowhere close to meeting its
original expectations regarding market penetration. It is hard to determine
exactly how much of market E-learning actually does possess because the
industry never properly defined its parameters. Quite a lot of work that
should be included as elements of e-learning are not considered as such.
This is something that can easily be remedied. We can correct this by
modifying many of the assumptions that went into the original definitions;
those modified assumptions include:

• E-learning is defined by practice and not by vendor categories. In other words E-learning is not a product or even product-oriented, it is a solutions practice. The vendor categories are not logically tied to the actual practice and must be put aside in order for the practice area to be properly understood by the marketplace. The vendors can later reorganize within the practice sub-categories.

• E-learning is primarily concerned with content. Delivery of content is and always was a secondary consideration. In fact, the entire notion of e-learning was to a large extent predicated upon the protocols and infrastructure inherent within the Internet (de facto delivery). Building secondary and tertiary delivery environments with divergent and idiosyncratic standards took away the primary advantage originally associated with the promise and potential of e-learning - universally accessible, inexpensive content.

• E-learning never developed its own philosophy, opting rather to graft traditional approaches to instructional design and assessment based outcomes onto the emerging technologies. This led to a fundamental discontinuity between the medium and message. Web-based content and the emergence of social publishing have been rapidly pushing towards an open content model, one built on democratized production and review rather than top-down or bureaucratic micro-management. The assumption that experts know better than we do how we will learn best is anachronistic, and worst of all, expensive.

• Traditional educational providers have demonstrated an unreasoning fear of the potential related to E-learning; this fear derives from an unwarranted assumption that if the true potential were adopted that their role would be marginalized. Nothing could be further from the truth – traditional education is under fire from every direction, budgets being cut, options being limited and the one tool that could help change that and actually expand opportunities is being ignored or sub-optimized. E-learning should lead the way to that new reality; not cater to the fear by perpetuating traditional solutions that were marginally effective before and less so now using learning technology.

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.