Why is an LCMS so important for creating elearning content?
A learning content management system (LCMS) is the new buzzword in the eLearning industry.
The LCMS is different from an LMS where the users can just see the content. The learners get emails about courses that are new to this system and hence they start browsing it.
But, the LCMS provides businesses with more facilities rather than an ordinary LMS. It makes sure that teams based in different parts of the world can contribute to the e-learning content. Since all the content is stored in one place, there is no repetition of it by a team member, leading to saving efforts.
If the authoring tool is not cloud-based, i.e., its content can’t be accessed through a server by all the team members, and then problems can arise in terms of content loss. This happens when the content is no longer available because a computer’s memory crashed and there was no backup.
There can also be version confusion as some parties may not have the updated copy of the e-learning content.
It’s true that in authoring tools, which are not cloud-based, the e-learning content has to be shared via Google drive with other team members. This has the benefit that read/write access is controlled because someone without access can’t make changes.
But when the content is updated, it has to be uploaded to Google drive; otherwise, the older version stays there. This requires a lot of effort from the team members, who have to download and upload the e-learning content file repeatedly. But this is not a problem with cloud-based authoring tools like Vyond where all the content is accessible through the portal.
But this kind of problem does not occur with an LCMS, where the e-learning content is on a cloud-based server accessible through the internet.
The team members can update the content by accessing it through the LCMS portal with their login credentials. So, all the e-learning content changes are recorded in this portal. There is no requirement of downloading the content for modifying it because LCMS has built-in authoring capabilities.
The read/write access is controlled and there is sufficient backup space in the cloud too.
Easy workflow communication and task scheduling
The LCMS also provides workflow management. Hence the e-learning companies in the US can get their team members to work in tandem. The e-learning content managers are working from varied locations, and collaboration might not happen through authoring software. So, you might be sharing content through Skype with the team. Project management software is so dependable when you are working with multiple teams.
They can be informed of the tasks ahead with content files attached and scheduling can be done, i.e., who will do what till what time. The progress made by team members is shown as updates to others, so it facilitates collaboration. When an authoring tool has such project management enabled, the team members can review each other’s work and suggest changes. If feedback about a certain work is ambiguous, then confusions can be solved through chat messengers like Teams included with such software.
Timely Project updates
The project management software makes sure all information about the work-in-progress of an important project can be accessed in one place. This includes the conversations, the checklists, the content, and graphic attachments, and the deadlines. However, authoring tools don’t have such project management tools incorporated with them, hence they are burdensome to use whereas LCMS is manageable. There is also an ease of adding more team members through such project management software.