Everyone's an Expert - The LCMS in the User-Generated Era

E-learning systems such as the Learning Management System (LMS) and Learning Content Management System (LCMS) face an upheaval, says Elliot Masie of the MASIE Center.

The e-learning futurist has his eyes on the e-learning prize, and says the target is not just moving but changing altogether.

"In a nutshell, we are moving from traditional branched e-Learning to a much wider set of informal learning, media-based objects, performance support objects, search based objects," he says in a "Briefing on LMS Changes", available on the website promoting the LMS 2007 Learning Systems User Group conference scheduled for Las Vegas April 12 and 13.

The reason? Changes in both the ways e-learning is being created and who is doing the creating, Masie says.

Here's what he says about the ways: "We are evolving from using just formal types of training to ever-increased production and distribution of informal content."

Here's what he says about the who: "Increasingly, Content is now coming not from a single syndicator of content, but rather from multiple sources. It is coming from internal and external sources and increasingly, Content is coming from the crowd. We are creating content at multiple points in the organization and we are giving the ability of subject matter experts and users, even sometimes customers and people in our supply chain, the opportunity to create Content as well."

And the challenge, he says, is helping learners find what they need: "We need to figure out a way in which our content becomes discoverable. Our learners are wanting to be able to get at Content in multiple formats...and our instructional designers are wanting to be able to get at the Content that's being created in other parts of our enterprise."

So what's an LCMS to do? Well, the answer really is to keep on doing what you've always done, only more of it.

That big capital C and big capital M in the acronym LCMS is what I'm talking about: Content Management.

The dominKnow LCMS has always been more than just a course creation tool.

It has always been a searchable, indexed content management tool that gives learners and developers alike the ability to find the learning content they need, whether that content is a full-fledged course with learning objectives and testing or a smaller piece of knowledge focused on an individual topic.

And it has always taken advantage of whatever content format works best for the individual creator of the content, whether it's a Microsoft Word or PowerPoint file or a PDF file or HTML pages or Adobe Flash movies (which includes content created by any tool able to export a .swf file.) And, with the 5.1 version, that now includes audio files such as podcasts.

This means: 1. Anyone can make the e-learning content they need to make 2. Anyone can find the e-learning content they need to find.

And it means that an LCMS is a good choice to help any organization deal with the changing natures of learning.