PARTNERING PROBLEMS

PARTNERING PROBLEMS

"My company recently purchased an LMS, and we are in the process of purchasing other tools (authoring, etc.) and content (custom and off-the-shelf) as well. These 'other' tools are from other vendors -- not our new LMS provider."

"Does anyone have any tips or words of advice to share regarding how to handle all of these players to ensure that at the end of the day, everything -- content, tools, and the LMS -- works together? What about negotiation tips for getting those from several separate companies to work together well, so that I'm happy with the finished product?"

http://www.vnulearning.com/learninggroup/search/index_taxonomy.jsp
We ran responses to this query in our last issue (March 14, 2006). Here are more:

Purchasing an LMS BEFORE analyzing course development and content needs puts one at a disadvantage, says Mark Undeberg (marku@mediapodium.com). One would hope, he continues, that the reader has not also already purchased authoring tools.

"If not, your path is simple. Just ask prospective authoring tool vendors and/or course suppliers to give you a sample course that you can test by plugging it into your LMS. If the implementation isn't cost-effective ... move on to another vendor or have the vendor adapt its materials."

Assuming the reader's LMS is SCORM- and/or AICC-compliant, he or she should be able to easily implement any SCORM- and/or AICC-content. "If you're working with vendors who are not SCORM-or AICC-compliant ... well, you probably shouldn't be."

Any vendor with integrity will help the reader integrate with other vendors and will do it for a reasonable fee, says Undeberg. "However, if you have purchased products that are not compliant and are not compatible, you're going to have to share the blame and expense for creating a situation that is hard on everyone."

"If you have already purchased your products with no thought for compatibility and your vendors are behaving unreasonably, your best option is to hire a consultant who can call their bluff."

Undeberg is president of MediaPodium LLC, an e-learning provider in Seattle, Wash.

PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Unfortunately, many companies make the mistake of purchasing LMSs long before they have any content to serve, agrees Al Moser (al@readygo.com). "This is like building a highway system before owning any cars or trucks."

That said, when looking at authoring tools, here are some of Moser's recommendations:

1. Make sure that your LMS supports the same specifications (AICC, SCORM) as the authoring tools you are considering. Many LMSs have an internal authoring system that uses proprietary specifications, notes Moser. These systems may offer some advantages over third-party tools, but they don't always allow users to deploy their content on another LMS or Web server should they encounter problems with the LMS.

2. Make sure that your LMS vendor promises to give your authoring tool's support department access to the LMS's technical development department. "My experience is that tech support departments at many LMS [vendors] don't know what SCORM and AICC are. Their usual response when a course is not launched/tracked properly is that the problem is the course, not their LMS." The real problem is usually more subtle, says Moser. For example, there is perhaps something in the course that is not supported by the LMS. Or the issue may be that something is compliant with the specification, but the LMS does not gracefully handle it. This can occur, says Moser, for both courses and content that are officially "certified."

3. Verify that your authoring system supports more than one behavior. "Within the e-learning specifications, you can get different behaviors based on how the LMS handles different information. For example, some LMSs will prevent students from returning to a course once their status has been set (by the course) to 'complete.' If you want to avoid this, your authoring tool should be able to instead set the student's status to 'passed' when he reaches the desired benchmark." If the authoring system only offers one version of SCORM or one version of AICC, it means that you will be restricted to the one behavior envisioned by the authoring tool's developers, says Moser. Thus, check that courses built with a tool are capable of reporting more than just score, lesson status and elapsed time. "The course should also report every answer provided by the student, though many LMSs don't store or report this."

4. Ideally, the authoring systems you are looking at can give you a list of the LMSs with which they already have integrated. "If they haven't integrated with the one you purchased, what is their support policy? Will you be able to get the LMS's technical development people to assist the authoring tool's personnel?"

5. Find out what plug-ins are required by the authoring system. "If it requires plug-ins that conflict with the plug-ins required by your LMS, you could run into trouble."

6. If possible, create a demo course with your candidate authoring systems and post it on your LMS to see what you do and don't like. "You'll be amazed at how much you learn about your LMS, the authoring system, and, in many cases, about your e-learning assumptions and processes."

Moser is VP of engineering at ReadyGo Inc., an e-learning authoring tool provider in Mountain View, Calif.

as published in Training Magazine