This is an inetersting thread for me as I used to be the Director of Content Management FOR an LMS company...
There is no doubt significant marketing blather that confuses the way we think about LMS, LCMS, CMS and WCMS... It is possible, however, to distinguish between them based on the needs they fill rather then on their functionality (if you catch my drift). This list is well aware of the various flavors of CMS/WCM and the distinctions between the two. CMSes span complete content management processes within and organization, that may include web content and publishing but generally have significant functionality beyond the WCMSes that essentially allow an organization to present their business online witout (hopefully) pulling their hair out. LCMS, in general, deals with the ability to create wbt/cbt content that's compliant to certain standards (generally SCORM). They often include authoring applications as well as ways to suck in existing content and structure it all into a piece of "e-larnin"... the e-larnin is generally/often web based, but not necissarily so... hence the conception that a WCMS or CMS makes sense to manage it. On a very limited scale, it might... espcially to act as a repository for the larnin content. So there's some overlap there... When you start talking about LMSes, it's a whole different beast, albeit one that MAY deal with web content. The reason e-learning is worth anything more then traditional learning material (a book, for instance) is because it's <hype>"interactive"</hype>. There are whole pedogical theories about why and when "interactive" is good, but the BUSINESS REASON it's good is that it makes a learners progress automatically "TRACKABLE." An LMS is about training and learning, not content... they were around before online content... essentially they're just databases that HR and Training Depts use to manage training programs, track employees skills and keep track of certifications and training budgets. A Trainer might use an LMS to reserve training maerials for a classroom, students could register for the classroom training, Trainers then enter students scores into the LMS, HR could track who's eligible for a promotion based on who's taken what training and how well they did. Great. Now e-learning and LMS work together to by-pass the human trainer's role... LMS has a list of all the WBT available, student accesses one course, interactive tests inside the WBT assess the students performance and send that back to the LMS where it's stored in their "permanent file" (yes... they do exist). Similar workflow to the classroom model. BTW, the WBT could be stored and accessed from within a CMS. SCORM comes in to make sure that the e-learning and the LMS communicate back and forth in a standard way. That's all it does. Says "write javascript like this" to e-learning authors, and says "read the input like this" to the LMS. simple... it's only taken 25 years to get to this point. Gosh, this is long... good thing I'm not in front of a class... they'd all be asleep by now. :) later, Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
