Soapbox: CMS vs. LCMS

By Massood Zarrabian

Organizations often are confused as to why they need a learning content management system (LCMS) if they already have a content management system (CMS). The confusion usually starts with the similarity in their names and continues due to not understanding the roles of two such systems and the synergies that can arise from them working together.

The assumption that learning content in whatever form is simply content creates the perception that an existing content management system can be used as an LCMS and provide for all learning content needs, as well. Although robust 
enterprise learning applications include specialized content management functionality, the reality is the functional overlap between an LCMS and a traditional content management 
system is small.

The other issue is that the term, “Learning Content Management System,” complicates the matter more, since it makes you think that the core of an LCMS is content management. In actuality, an LCMS is a learning application that deals with the development, management, maintenance, and delivery of learning materials.

The Content Management System

Numerous studies highlight that more than 80 percent of a typical organization’s content is unstructured. This content exists everywhere in the organization, from engineering drawings and specifications to sales and marketing collateral; from centralized servers and shared file systems to individual hard drives; plus Web-based sources, such as wikis, blogs, and the like. Additionally, content may be highly accessible to the creator(s), but there is often no logical way for others to know the content exists or how to 
access it. Moreover, the wide variety of document formats inhibits document sharing because the viewing application may or may not be normally available. Because this unstructured content lives everywhere, workers must spend an increasing amount of time looking for the information that is pertinent to their jobs. The stark realization, however, is that if existing content cannot be 
located easily by workers, it most often will be recreated—wasting valuable time and 
resources.

The Content Management System addresses the inability to organize unstructured content by providing the capability for users to tag and, therefore, categorize the content. Individuals now can be pointed in the direction of the CMS to pull specific documents, search for drawings, and find the answers to information within the categories. The CMS offers precise searching and easier navigation than uncharted file-sharing systems, and can be tailored to specific groups based on security.

The Learning Content 
Management System

While analysts originally coined the somewhat confusing term, “LCMS,” the system itself has a worthy core purpose: to develop, manage, maintain, and deliver learning content in a modular form, as opposed to monolithic training. Typically, organizations that adopt an LCMS do so to address one or more of the following pain points:

• Duplication of efforts that add to overall costs.
• Inability to reuse work done by others and hence starting from scratch every time new learning material needs to be created.
• Inability to convert authored content into various formats.
• Inability to maintain a consistent standard for generated content.

To overcome these issues, organizations need a system that allows them to have full control of the individual learning content components, or modules, to streamline development, generate more content faster, and improve the quality of the learning material.

The traditional CMS will not serve their purposes; the delivery of modular and personalized learning only can be achieved with a system that can natively support instructional design concepts and schemas. The system also must enable the 
development, management, maintenance, and 
delivery of learning content at a granular level, which subsequently is linked and assembled into learning modules. It is this ability—locating, reusing, and assembling small chunks of learning materials to a large number of output media—that is central to the critical need for and purpose of an LCMS.

When you get down to it, the fundamental difference between the CMS and the LCMS is the unique way in which an LCMS understands relationships between objects. With this knowledge, the LCMS is able to deliver content—packaged together from the appropriate modules—to the right person at the right time. It also can package content in specific ways to meet the needs of a particular output—resizing an image to meet different packaging requirements, for example.

In addition to this key differentiator, the LCMS also possesses many traditional content management functions such as versioning and security. As such, many people think of the LCMS as a particular application of a CMS. It builds on the core 
components of a CMS to provide a platform geared specifically for learning that enables authors to easily find and retrieve items for maintenance, and 
reuse and assemble them into new learning materials.

Ultimately, the use of CMSs and LCMSs 
arises from completely different needs in an 
organization. The need for a CMS is often a central repository with easy navigation and search 
capabilities that may or may not have object or user tracking. An LCMS is organized specifically for educational purposes, with the ability to 
create, manage, maintain, and deliver personalized 
content to a targeted audience. Although there are some overlaps between the LCMS and CMS, the LCMS provides a much richer learning focus on these items. In addition, the overlap does not preclude the two from working in conjunction. When an organization has both in place, its specific needs and user population will determine which functionality is utilized from the available systems.

Similarities Between 
a CMS and an LCMS

• Organization of content based on some hierarchy
• Tagging of content
• Searching the content based on keywords or other documented methods
• Cohesive delivery of content
• Reporting on content usage
• User access control and logging
• Adding or importing content based on security

Differences Between 
a CMS and an LCMS

(These are seen in the following 
characteristics of an LCMS):

• Built-in support for sophisticated development practices and the strengths of roles such as subject matter experts and instructional designers.
• Granular searching of content objects for reuse and repurpose.
• A deep understanding of the hierarchy associated with learning concepts and training.
• Customized workflow as it relates to training and the creation of learning content.
• Instructional design methodologies used to 
create/reuse learning content.
• Deliberate inclusion of required learning content components, e.g., tests and assessments.
• Course completion and learning path tracking; compliance and certification tracking.
• Deploying content to support instructor-led training requirements (presentations, instructor guides, student guides), as well as performance support, mobile, or Web-based training.
• Development and deployment of single-source content for delivery in a variety of native formats based on the organization’s and learner’s 
requirements.
• Ability to generate learning that utilizes tests and assessments to identify and meet specific knowledge gaps for an individual instead of applying the ‘one-size-fits all’ classroom-learning model.

Massood Zarrabian is president and CEO of OutStart, which offers social business software, learning systems, and a mobile solution. For more information, visit 
www.outstart.com.