LMO Wk 2 Response 2: Sharon Jones

Sharon Jones had a very good post this week which helped to clarify the acronyms used throughout CMS, LMS, and LCMS platforms. Her post can be found here, and a paragraph from her blog is copied below:

"In an excellent blog enumerating the many different interpretations of the acronyms, LMS, CMS and LCMS, Don McIntosh discusses the differences between corporate LMS's and those in the educational field. In the corporate sector, the tendency is for an LCMS to be used for tracking an individual learner and specific content. There is rarely an available instructor. The individual learner is basically "check boxing" the content accessed from the elearning site. Within the education field, "content" is frequently replaced by "course." In this model, the educational institution generally already has the basic LMS in place through existing systems. Students have already been registered, and the capabilities exist to monitor their progress. In the education sector, authoring tools from LCMS's are used to build a full educational experience to include content, email, discussions, wikis, blogs, and educational media. An LCMS can be applied, not only to elearning, but also to more traditional face-to-face classes to enhance the learning experience."

Sharon,

I think all of us are discovering that indeed, this industry is a complex alphabet soup of acronyms whose meanings can differ from sector to sector. That said, I really appreciated how you were able to differentiate between LMS and CMS platforms in your post this week.

Educational institutions do have different needs than corporate interests. As such, your explanation that while corporations may use a Content Management System, and educational organization would likely leverage a Course Management System to meet their direct needs.

Your explanation helps describe the organizational nature which likely underlies how these two industry groups would aggregate their content. On one hand, that organizational within the business world leads to tracking data and progress for an individual. Instead, the inherent models used in educational settings suggest that data and content is organized around courses and classrooms (virtual and brick-and-mortar).

Thank you for the post. Unraveling the complexities in these systems is valuable to both virtual learning environments, and as you mentioned towards the end of your post, face-to-face environments as well. I think that this is another important element for educators to consider. As we have all defended the validity of online educational systems to some degree throughout the last year in our posts and discussions, it is important to remember that these tools are valuable for ALL classrooms as students, instructors, administrators, and even parents can benefit from access to data, course materials, and additional resources and support.

Well done.

-Scott