Charley, Darrel,
This is how I see LMS and LCMS scope. I'll copy/paste from another offline
thread.
LMS: Portal Server
LCMS: Course development platform
Service System
Course Administration LMS Back-end
Student Profiles LMS Back/Front
Tracking LMS Front
Delivery LMS Front
(published)
Content Management LCMS Back
Testing / Assessments LCMS Front
Sequencing LCMS Back
(Dependancy of a course should be defined by course)
Why should testing be done by the course and not the LMS? There are just
too many types of assessments for any one LMS to offer and often, these
assessments are unique to the course (custom built). The LMS I'm currently
building a course for provides true/false, multiple choice, and fill in the
blank assessments. We won't use any of them. Why? Because the course
teaches employees how to use a piece of software. The best way to learn the
material is to build simulations and ask the student to complete a specific
task in the simulation. What would the point be of asking the employee:
What does the "new" button do?
a) Close the application
b) Copy the currently selected text
c) Create a new document
"Hands-on" testing is what we need and no LMS can/should provide simulation
testing abilities. I really believe the course should handle it and simply
pass the result to the LMS. Even randomzing questions, bookmarking, and
course notes should be handled by the course itself. SCORM tried to
standardize all courseware but if you try to standardize it too much, you're
going to end up with the lowest common denominator: crap. Let course
development companies build functionality into their courseware that makes
them stand out from the rest to promote quality and progress. The standard
shouldn't impose an approach.
The "speed-bumps", as you call them Charley, are still there. The course
description file delivered with the course would tell the LMS that the
student cannot begin this course until courses A, B, and C (identified with
GUIDs) have been successfully completed (these can be changed manually by
the LMS admin post-import). Managing inter-dependancies of courses and
"learning paths" is within LMS scope but it should be initially defined by
the course so that importing vast amounts of courseware is simple.
Sorry, long post. Is LMS/LCMS scope clearer?
a.
-----Original Message-----
Behalf Of Austin, Darrel
> It's stuff like this where LMS/CMS versus eLearning
> starts to make me scratch my head.
I'm scratching my head too.
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