Differentiating LMS from LCMS

LMS delivers and tracks training courses.

LCMS authors and manages learning content.

There are quite a few key factors you need to think of when implementing an eLearning strategy for your organization. How would your company deliver the eLearning, what kind of content will you deliver, how are you going to present your content are just to name a few.

One of the most important factors to keep in mind is how are you going to deploy your training; do you want a platform that uses “pre-made” content to be used within your platform in which you can:

• Address your platform to your students.
• Assess your students.
• Pull reports.
• Create a collaborative environment by implementing:
  • Forums.
  • Wikis.
  • Chat.
  • Social Wall.
  • Video Conferencing.
  • Many others
• Courses as software packages.
• Implement multiple types of pedagogies.
• Allow your students to access their training on the go.

Or do you simply want to:

• Address your platform to your training and content creation team.
• Implement eLearning on a convenient and effective manner.
• Use and give format to your pre-made training materials such as:
  • PDF’s
  • .PPT
  • .DOC
  • Many others
• Create and manage reusable content.
• Eliminate the duplicate content development situation.

These are just the features of two great solutions for eLearning implementation LMS and LCMS. In some way, both bring great benefits to your team, depending on how do you want to deliver your e-Learning. To give you more context on what they are:

LMS (Learning Management System) a platform focusing on managing people:

In a nutshell, LMS allows you to deliver your training within the platform itself, creating a learning environment that you can easily manage and control. It also allows your students to have multiple tools within the application such as forums, collaborative learning, user interaction. It also allows your organisation to keep track of the training by pulling reports from data stored on the application. It delivers a unique eLearning experience to both your organisation and your users.

LCMS (Learning Content Management Systems ) a platform focusing on content creation:

Also known as Learning Content Management Systems is a solution that works great for those companies that want to keep it simple and have their content creation and course creation in house and wish to deliver eLearning as fast as possible. This platform is a content designing platform, it allows your subject matter experts to create and compile your learning content in such an easy and convenient way that your course creation team can re-use this content for future courses avoiding a “multiple staged training” (create content, create courses and deliver training, over and over again, every time your company has training needs). It also allows you to divide your training into multiple pieces and spread it properly and conveniently through your organization saving time and resources.

LMS or LCMS? Which one is right for you?

Difference between LMS and LCMS is basically content creation, if you want to create your own content in house and employ trainers, content creators and coaches who are capable of creating training materials then LCMS is the right choice for your organization. LMS on the other hand focuses more on managing how individuals participate in e-learning programs and fits organizations that chooses to use “off the shelf” components.