CHAPTER 1

What Is a Learning Management System?

A learning management system (LMS) is not the remedy for all your organization’s learning challenges. But it can be useful, especially to organizations that provide training and education programs to employees, customers, suppliers, distributors, professional association members, military personnel, college students, and others. If your organization is one of these, you probably know that managing the delivery of learning programs presents many challenges.

Training events such as classes, workshops, and seminars must be scheduled for a specific time and place. The event may be at a physical location or a web address, as in the case of a webinar or virtual class. People must be able to enroll in the training event, and one or more instructors must be assigned to deliver the training program, take attendance, and issue credit for course completion.

Self-paced training introduces its own set of challenges. Course software and other digital materials must be uploaded and published for online access. People must be able to locate and launch the course. Their work must be tracked and recorded automatically so that they can receive credit. People who exit before finishing the course must be able to resume at the point they left off.

And of course, some training requires a blend of scheduled events, self-paced modules, assignments, tests, surveys, and other components.

Clearly, the need to manage and track training programs of all types requires software that can handle the task with sophistication and ease, and provide the L&D function with information it needs to improve its services to individual learners and the organization as a whole. An LMS can contribute significantly to this goal.

LMS Explained

Before going any further, we need to establish what an LMS is. Let’s start with a basic definition:

If the key word in your organization’s name is education, training, learning, performance, or some combination of them, you probably need an LMS. However, there are several different types out there. The specific type you need depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

3 Types of LMS Products

If you are confused about what an LMS is and what it does, you are not alone. Even if you believe you have a clear understanding, you may be surprised to learn that there are three distinctly different types of LMS, each with its own unique feature set. The learning management capabilities you need may be found in one or more of these product categories.

I have worked with organizations that started out trying to compare products from two or all three of these categories. After much wheel spinning and head scratching, they discovered that they were comparing apples with oranges. If you are getting ready to buy an LMS and don’t have a basic understanding of the LMS landscape, you may waste valuable time and effort evaluating products that are not optimally suited to your organization’s needs. So let’s take a quick look at the LMS marketplace.

I find it helpful to break down LMS products into three major categories, which I call corporate LMS, academic LMS, and integrated LCMS-LMS (the C in LCMS stands for content). While these labels are generally not used by vendors, they can help you understand the LMS business and make better LMS choices. But be careful not to rule out any of these categories because of its label. For example, many corporations use academic LMS products instead of, or in addition to, a corporate LMS. The labels are more about how each type of LMS is used rather than who uses it. Ultimately, a better understanding of these categories may help you focus on the type of product that best meets your needs.

Corporate LMS

A corporate LMS is about connecting people with learning programs. It has a catalog of all the courses you offer. People log in to the corporate LMS to register and get credit for your courses.

Corporate LMS products are primarily geared toward organizations that offer relatively short courses that may range from an hour or less to several days. They typically contain courses that a company’s employees might need related to sales, customer service, products, policies and procedures, soft skills, personal productivity, management and leadership, new hire orientation, regulatory compliance, and other relevant topics.

Most LMS products are in this category, and there are many corporate LMS products available.

Academic LMS

An academic LMS is an online extension of, or replacement for, the classroom. It is a website where instructors and students meet and collaborate online. Instructors can post materials and assignments. Students can chat with the instructor or with one another, hand in assignments, and take quizzes.

Academic LMS products are primarily geared toward institutions that offer courses spanning a term or semester. There are a few dozen academic LMS products available.

Integrated LCMS-LMS

An integrated LCMS-LMS provides many of the same course delivery features as a corporate LMS. But it also offers features not found in a corporate LMS for developing, or authoring, content. Many course developers use PC or Mac authoring tool software to create online courses. Others use an LCMS to create not just online courses, but also job aids, instructor and student guides, and other types of learning content. Some of the most robust LCMS products are strictly focused on content development and do not offer any of the LMS capabilities needed to deliver the content to learners. But a growing number of products now offer both content creation and delivery capabilities. I call this type of hybrid product an integrated LCMS-LMS.

Using More Than 1 Type of LMS

Some organizations use more than one type of LMS. For example, an organization may use a corporate LMS to manage self-registration, provide access to web-based courses, schedule training events, and track and report on training activity. The same organization may use an academic LMS for its virtual classes.

Commercial Versus Open Source LMS Products

Beyond the three types of LMS products already covered, both commercial and open source products are available. The key advantage of a commercial LMS is that it is fully supported by the manufacturer. If you run into problems, you have someone to call for help. The key advantage of an open source LMS is that there are no licensing costs. If you are on a tight budget, this is worth serious consideration.

Table 1-1 compares commercial and open source in terms of who owns the product, how product enhancements are managed, how costs are structured, and how the product is supported. If you are unfamiliar with some of the technical terms, please refer to appendix B for a glossary of IT technical jargon.

Stand-Alone LMS Products

Most LMS products are offered as a complete, stand-alone system. In other words, the LMS has its own web address and user interface. Many of these products have administrator-configurable properties that enable you to implement your own branding, logo, and color scheme. You can enable the features you want to use and disable those you do not. For example, if you want to require that people pay to take your courses, you could turn on the product’s e-commerce features. However, if your courses are intended for employees, you could disable e-commerce.

These products usually offer integration capabilities that allow the LMS to share user account information and training data with other systems, such as human resource management systems (HRMS) used by businesses, membership management systems (MMS) used by professional associations, and student information systems (SIS) used by academic institutions. This is important because it improves the integrity of your data. If your LMS does not share user account data with your HRMS, MMS, or SIS, then user accounts must be created from scratch in the LMS. This can lead to discrepancies where the LMS user profile data differ from the data in your other systems, leaving you to wonder which system is correct.

Just a few years ago, all LMS products were stand-alone systems, and they still dominate the LMS market. In recent years, however, LMS products have emerged in the form of apps and plug-ins, which deserve some attention.

LMS Apps and Plug-Ins

A growing number of LMS products are available as apps and plug-ins that add learning management features to your existing website. If your organization’s website is built atop a popular software framework such as WordPress, Salesforce, or Microsoft SharePoint, you should consider an LMS app or plug-in.

Like stand-alone LMS products, LMS apps and plug-ins can be commercial or open source and may offer corporate, academic, or LCMS-LMS feature sets. They generally provide the same functionality as their stand-alone cousins.

Because LMS apps and plug-ins are seamlessly embedded in your website, the user experience is more consistent and streamlined. People can access your courses without leaving your site to go to a separate system. This means that your customers or professional association members can view and purchase courses alongside other products and services, your employees can access learning programs alongside related documents and other content, and your academic students can access their courses through your student portal.

LMS apps and plug-ins are integrated with the data in your WordPress, Salesforce, or SharePoint framework. The same user database employed by other features of your website is also utilized by the LMS, and your LMS data are accessed through the framework’s reporting tool.

LMS Versus Learning Record Store

There is another learning technology called a learning record store (LRS), which is associated with the Experience API (xAPI) specification. (Read more about what you can do with xAPI and learning record stores in chapter 5.) But what is the difference between an LMS and an LRS? Should you get an LMS or an LRS?

The purpose of an LMS is to help you schedule, distribute, and manage the delivery of learning programs and provide direct access to people who use those programs. LMS users are learners, instructors, and learning administrators.

In contrast, the purpose of an LRS is to store the xAPI learning activity data generated by your websites, systems, and applications. LRS users are xAPI developers and data analysts.

Some LMS products that support xAPI have a built-in LRS or can connect to a third-party LRS. Increasingly, organizations are using an LMS to manage their formal learning programs and xAPI and an LRS to collect data on the informal learning that happens through social networks, knowledge bases, performance support systems, instructional games and simulations, and elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

This chapter introduced three types of LMS products (corporate, academic, and LCMS-LMS); compared the pros and cons of commercial versus open source products; discussed how an LMS can be a stand-alone product or an app or plug-in; and explained the key differences between an LMS and an LRS. If you plan to acquire the appropriate LMS solution for your organization, you need to understand the choices available. The key takeaways are:

• An LMS is a multiuser software application, usually accessed through a web browser, that helps organizations manage training events, self-paced courses, and blended learning programs.
• The three main categories of LMS products are corporate LMS, academic LMS, and integrated LCMS-LMS. Each has a unique feature set and use model.
• There are commercial and open-source LMS products. A commercial LMS is fully supported by the manufacturer; an open source LMS has no licensing costs.
• Most LMS products are stand-alone systems. However, some are packaged as apps or plug-ins for popular website frameworks such as WordPress, SharePoint, and Salesforce.
• An LMS should not be confused with an LRS, which collects and stores xAPI learning data generated in other systems. While LMS users are learners, instructors, and learning administrators, LRS users are xAPI developers and data analysts.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what an LMS is and is not, chapters 2-4 will delve more deeply into the features available in corporate LMS products, academic LMS products, and LCMS-LMS products, respectively.