To LMS or not to LMS
At some point in their growth, many organisations identify a need to distribute learning and training material to people in diverse locations. E-learning is an ideal solution for this need, but how should it be deployed for maximum benefit to the organisation?
A key decision in a large-scale deployment concerns whether to use a Learning Management System (LMS) to manage the delivery of learning content. And it's not hard to see why - LMSs have many benefits, and in the right environment are a perfect choice for learning and training delivery to people in disparate locations. Some of the benefits include:
- A single location for material
- The ability to easily update material and have updates distributed to learners instantly
- The ability to manage access to different resources through user authentication
However, the use of LMS based content depends on having readily available and reliable access to the internet. In developing markets, this can't always be depended upon. Although some vendors claim that their LMSs allow content to be exported to other formats, through tools like the
Blackboard Backpack, it's often not as easy as is suggested.
Posted by Steve Gallagher at July 14, 2006 06:25 PM
