Thursday, February 5, 2009

What Goes in the LMS?

Recently I posted on Learning Materials asking the question -

What Goes in the LMS?

The responses via comments were truly fantastic. In fact, they were too fantastic to have them "buried" as comments. And I wanted to add some of my thoughts, so I'm post again on this topic.

Oh, and, as always, the answer is "it depends" - but let's try to come up with a few suggestions...

Should go in the LMS -
  • Only finished content.
  • Anything with per-learner, strict tracking requirements.
  • Certification/Accreditation management: companies still need to know who went through which course and when, and what was his/her score at the end of it.
  • Learning paths: some competencies require that content is presented in a specific order, an order that could be hardly reproduced in informal learning by learners without direct guidance.
  • Content that's associated with the course content.
Should not go in the LMS -
  • Content that doesn't need strict tracking.
  • Content that needs fast access
Other thoughts -
  • Put things in both places
  • Build a rich web of connections to make sure they connect together