LMS and e-learning content vendors: can't we all just get along? - Supplier Savvy - learning management systems

T+D, Sept, 2002 by Dave Egan

Without argument, e-learning holds enormous potential for learners, their companies, and those who sell learning content, technology, and tools. But there's a dirty little secret: Getting Webbased courses to work elegantly within learning management systems can be rime-consuming, frustrating, and expensive. Forget the brochureware; we're a long way from the plug-and-play stage.

Even the biggest names in content and LMSs sometimes leave their clients struggling to access and utilize the learning courses they bought the LMSs to manage. The fact that an LMS and an e-learning course comply with industry standards such as AICC or SCORM doesn't ensure that the content will work as expected. When customers describe the problem to the vendor, they. get back finger-pointing, nor solutions. Everyone loses, especially the customer who signed the purchase order and the company that missed an opportunity to improve performance.

Content vendors, LMS vendors, and clients had better learn to get along. Our livelihoods are riding on it.

Savvy customers are beginning to work closely with suppliers to ensure that the LMS they purchased will launch, track, and manage their courses--proprietary and off-the-shelf. By forcing LMS and content vendors to get in the same room, lock the doors, and hammer out a plan to guarantee interoperability, users are seeing positive results and shorter time to true interoperability. They're also starting to realize that the days of paying a cut rate to their Uncle Harry for "custom courseware" are long gone; they'll only be disappointed when the courseware falls apart. But making courseware and LMSs interoperable doesn't happen by itself. All sides must come together to make compatibility the norm.

Industry standards such as AICC and SCORM are only partly the answer. On one hand, they're immensely important, and they bring LMS and content vendors into the same ballpark. In fact, customers should limit their courseware and LMS purchases to products that comply fully with the most recent versions of the standards.

There are three inherent shortcomings, however, in AICC and SCORM. One, they're recommendations--not fixed, rock-solid specifications such as the IEEE standards that govern the data going over network cables. So, some vendors don't comply.

Two, the standards are broad and soft in some spots. Therefore, they're open to wide variation. Two vendors can build their products to comply with AICC and SCORM standards and still end up with products that don't work together. It's similar to two people interpreting the color blue differently, one as sky blue and the other as ocean blue.

Three, standards are historical. They propose guidelines for established processes and capabilities. Innovations such as Web-based simulations fall entirely outside the standards--to say nothing of new learning content ideas such as noncourseware objects and mobile learning.

Last resort

Those shortcomings in interoperability tempt customers to resort to single-vendor, vertically integrated e-learning solutions even if they limit customers to the courseware that the particular vendor offers. That's a narrow solution that may ease some headaches in the short-term but severely limit learning choices over the long-term. That's like having to buy all of your food from the convenience store next door: Selection will be simple, but you won't get the variety you need. To gain access to the rapidly expanding world of learning opportunities, companies need LMSs that play any content regardless of mode, source, or brand. And content vendors must work to ensure compatibility with the LMS that a customer chooses.

So there's consensus: Content providers and LMS providers need to work harder to get along. Content vendors need to be fully accountable for working with their target LMSs. They also need to seek any resources to that goal that the LMS vendor offers, including guidelines and testing facilities. The content suppliers need to force the issue of interoperability with LMS suppliers that aren't extending a hand.

LMS vendors need, in turn, to reach out to their preferred content suppliers and provide the appropriate guidelines and facilities. Customers need to foster content provider-LMS relationships where possible and appreciate the complexity of the interoperability task. Moreover, customers need to pay fair market value for content that has been rested and proven to work.

Making it work

How will that look in real life? Here's what we propose.

LMS vendors need to swing open their doors and offer their software for testing. For example, they can create courseware-testing centers on the Web. Courseware vendors, custom-content providers, and other courseware authors can upload course files to those sites and see how the content runs. They can see derailed diagnostic reports and event log files, and have ready access to support, diagnostic, and development consultants if needed.

To give courseware developers a fighting chance to get it right the first time, LMS vendors should provide detailed, open guidelines so that they can optimize the content in fine detail to work seamlessly and elegantly with any and all versions of a vendor's LMS.