![Close [x]](http://dw1.s81c.com/i/c.gif){kind=small}
Large organizations spend millions of dollars each year training their employees, business partners, and suppliers. Learning management systems have become more sophisticated over time to meet not only the physical and Web-based training delivery needs, but also to meet the planning and procedural activities. Implementing a learning system requires you to carefully consider your approach to corporate education. Perhaps you need to redefine some of your business processes, or even redesign your course delivery methods. From an IT perspective, these systems need to be flexible and scalable. In addition, security, integration, and performance are key elements in the design of a successful learning system.
This article can help you decide which IBM learning system is right for you. We explain the advantages of each system, and present things to consider when making your choice. We assume you're an education professional who is (or may soon be) in the process of evaluating IBM’s learning products. A general knowledge of managing and delivering corporate training would be helpful in understanding the terminology and concepts we discuss. For more information about the benefits and features of IBM’s learning offerings, visit IBM's Learning Web site.
IBM's learning products: a brief history
In January 2003, IBM Lotus released Learning Management System 1.0. This was the first IBM Lotus product based on J2EE technology. The developerWorks: Lotus article, "The evolution of Lotus e-Learning Software," summarizes the release-by-release development of LMS features.
In mid-2003, IBM announced its Lotus Workplace strategy, an innovative solution that brings together all facets of collaboration for an enterprise. IBM quickly released four portlets to interface with LMS 1.0.2 in the background via the existing Web Services API. This combination of LMS 1.0.2 and the portlets added to Lotus Workplace was called Lotus Workplace Collaborative Learning 1.1. Therefore, both products share the same code base as well as the same database structure.
IBM continued to develop the LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning products in parallel, while maintaining a high level of coordination between the two. When a problem was discovered in either product, the fix was applied to both code streams.
In early 2004, LMS 1.0.3 was released in conjunction with Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.0. Then, in mid-2004, LMS 1.0.4 was released in conjunction with Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.0.1. IBM has subsequently renamed the Workplace code stream to IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning and released version 2.5 in the second quarter of 2005.
The following table shows the versions and features mapping between LMS and the Workplace Collaborative Learning:
| 1997 - 2002 | Q1 2003 | Q2 2004 | Q3 2004 | Q3 2005 | 2005 - 2006 |
| LearningSpace Forum 3.6.x LearningSpace 5.0.x | Learning Management System (LMS) 1.0.x
| Learning Management System 1.0.4 Workplace Collaborative Learning 1.1
|
Learning Management System 1.0.5 Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.0.x
| Learning Management System 1.0.5 Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5
| Workplace Collaborative Learning |
In the future, the two products will merge. The next release of Workplace Collaborative Learning will also be considered the next release of the LMS.
Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 and LMS 1.0.5 use the same base code and thus are virtually identical products in many ways. However, Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 exposes several new features that don't appear in LMS 1.0.5.
First, let’s review their similarities:
- Standards-based solution built on J2EE.
- Same administrative user interface.
- Allow scheduling of instructor-led training (ILT).
- Allow delivery of Web-based training (WBT).
- Can connect to a discussion server for threaded discussions.
- Can connect to the IBM Lotus Live Virtual Classroom (LVC).
- Same Web Services API. An application coded to use the LMS 1.0.5 Web Services API will work with Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5.
- Support SCORM 1.2 courses and AICC when imported through the Workplace Collaborative Learning Authoring Tool courses.
- Offline Learning Client, which allows students to take courses while disconnected from the network.
But there are some important differences between LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning. For example, Workplace Collaborative Learning offers:
- Significant performance improvements.
- A brand-new student user interface, which is easier to use and allows students to collaborate with each other while working on their workplace (see figure 1).
- The Course Collaboration Template that combines collaborative components, such as discussion, document libraries, group calendars, and Web conferencing.
- A mechanism for tracking skills and competencies. This is equivalent to Profiles and Profile Categories in LMS 1.0.x.
- Presence awareness (that is, the ability to see who is online) throughout the student interface. (A purchase of an additional license may be required for this feature.)
- Fixes and enhancements to LMS 1.0.5.
Figure 1. IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning Student Home
Compare figure 1 to the LMS Student Home (shown in figure 2):
Figure 2: IBM Lotus Learning Management System Student Home
Things to consider when choosing between LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning
Up to this point in the article, we've been explaining how LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning are largely the same. The major differences between the products are the user interface and several features such as skills and competencies. These differences by themselves are probably not enough to recommend one product over the other. However, there are a number of "nonfunctional" considerations to take into account when choosing between LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning. The following sections discuss these considerations.
Some customers like to install the "latest and greatest" software provided by a vendor. Others prefer more "tried-and-true" releases that have been thoroughly tested by other customers worldwide. LMS 1.0.x has been on the market longer than Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5, but you should be aware that IBM has announced that all new features and enhancements will only be added to Workplace Collaborative Learning. This is because (as mentioned earlier in this article) Workplace Collaborative Learning is in fact the next release of LMS. IBM has announced that no new features will be added to the LMS code stream. IBM will continue to support this code stream, and will continue to release service packs periodically. However, all future functionality enhancements will be delivered in the Workplace Collaborative Learning code stream.
Think about the following questions when deciding between Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 and LMS 1.0.5:
- Does your enterprise like to use the most up-to-date software?
- Are you implementing a temporary solution for only one or two years?
- Do you need the new features in Workplace Collaborative Learning?
- Will you eventually migrate to Workplace Collaborative Learning?
As mentioned in the previous section, Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 offers skills and competencies, presence awareness, and the Course Collaboration Template; three features not found in LMS. In addition, the user partitioning function in the LMS has been significantly improved in Workplace Collaborative Learning. The following sections provide an overview of these features and how they can help within an organization.
In Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5, the Profiles and Profile Category functionality that existed in LMS has been enhanced to become a means to track skills and competencies (also known as career development) for an employee, and to design a specific learning map based on skill gap analysis.
In LMS, you can group students into a specific profile that belongs to a profile category. These profiles can then be mapped to one or more courses, which could serve as a learning path for the student. In Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5, you can associate students with a particular job that has a corresponding set of skills. This allows an organization’s employees to better align business goals with job functions, skills development, and learning. Additionally, this feature allows you to assess and identify competency gaps, thus helping determine the best way to fill those gaps.
In LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning, a job is defined as a set of skills. A skill is also associated with a proficiency level. For example, suppose an employee’s job is Programmer. This job is associated with the following skills: Java development, software design, and software testing. This employee might be an expert in Java development, but is considered a beginner in software design. Therefore, if the employee wants to become a better programmer, she needs to address the skills gap that has been identified for her (for example, “Need to improve Software Design skillâ€). Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 recommends specific training for the student to help bridge that skill gap. And Workplace Collaborative Learning allows an enterprise to track all this information.
While this feature was not "added" to Workplace Collaborative Learning in the strictest sense, it is part of Workplace Collaboration Services and other IBM Workplace products. Awareness has been added to the Learning portlets so students can instantly interact with instructors, as well as other students using the Learning system at the same time.
For customers who have purchased IBM Workplace Collaboration Services, presence awareness is included. However, for customers who have only licensed Workplace Collaborative Learning, additional license(s) for IBM Workplace Team Collaboration will be needed.
Collaborative tool integration for courses
Workplace Collaborative Learning can be used with another IBM Workplace product, IBM Workplace Team Spaces, to provide users with a discussion area. When you do this, courses, certificates, curricula, and so on can be linked to a Team Space where students can collaborate and help each other as needed. For example, students can talk about how much time is needed to attend a particular course, and whether or not they felt they achieved the objectives for the course.
One key difference between LMS 1.0.5 and Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 is that in the latter, the course collaboration template has been provided to allow courses to include discussion forums, course calendars, persistent chat sessions, document sharing, and Web conferencing sessions in support of a more blended learning approach. On the other hand, LMS requires the use of IBM Lotus Live Virtual Classroom (LVC) to provide these features.
Course collaboration is an essential feature in a collaborative learning environment. IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning brings rich collaborative features together to create the most powerful online learning environment for an organization. You should consider what types of courses your organization will use and what purpose the learning system will serve within the enterprise. For example, some organizations may want to use the learning system as their robust learning infrastructure that will integrate with other business components already in place. Other organizations, however, may use the learning system as a place to track all learning-related data.
User partitioning is a way to segregate user data in LMS and prevent users in one organization from seeing data for students in another organization. This feature is extremely important in environments where student privacy is imperative. Although user partitioning is not a new feature, it has been significantly improved in Workplace Collaborative Learning. In LMS, you can only partition users based on the LDAP hierarchy. For example, in LMS you can prevent user Luis Benitez/Cambridge/IBM from seeing John Doe/Westford/IBM, since they are in two different branches of the LDAP tree.
User partitioning goes a step further in Workplace Collaborative Learning. You can partition your users based on any attribute of the user directory. For instance, you can create a partition so that users with “first nameâ€=Luis can only see those users with “first nameâ€=Luis. The following list provides the attributes that can be used to create a partition:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Email Address
- Location
- Phone
- Department Number
- Job Title
- Organizational Unit
- Organization
- Employee Number
- Business Category
These attributes can be mapped to any LDAP attribute that your organization requires.
Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 has been thoroughly tested with up to 1,000 concurrent users and a total registered user base of approximately 40,000 users. Consequently, if you are planning to deploy your learning application into an environment that requires more than 1,000 concurrent users and/or more than 40,000 total users, you should consider implementing LMS 1.0.x. This is because the LMS is lighter, has fewer features, and is simpler to scale. On the other hand, you should also understand that there’s no hard limit on the number of users that can use LMS or Workplace Collaborative Learning.
The good news, however, is that internal testing shows that less powerful hardware is required to support 1,000 concurrent users in Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 than is needed for LMS 1.0.5. This is a result of the optimization efforts IBM performed to improve the performance of database queries. Not only were database queries optimized, but also the code was reviewed and adjusted to ensure that the application didn’t submit unnecessary LDAP queries. (See also the developerWorks: Lotus article series, "Developing IBM Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5," part 1 and part 2.)
If you expect to have more than 1,000 concurrent users or more than 40,000 total users, please contact your IBM Software representative to ensure that you have sufficient hardware to support your implementation.
Infrastructure (application and directory server)
In this section, we compare the application and directory server requirements to run Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 and LMS 1.0.5. First, let's look at application server platforms supported:
| LMS 1.0.5 | Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 |
|
|
And here's the LDAP servers supported by LMS 1.0.5 and Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5:
| LMS 1.0.5 | Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 |
|
|
The Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5 Release Notes contain the latest information on supported platforms, operating systems, directory servers, and so on.
Migrating from LMS to Workplace Collaborative Learning
Environments that may want to install LMS now and eventually migrate to Workplace Collaborative Learning should consider the potential costs involved in this future migration. If you expect your organization to be on a tight budget for the foreseeable future, then LMS could be an attractive choice. In some ways, LMS can be considered a less expensive solution -- as we mentioned previously, it's "lighter" than Workplace Collaborative Learning and is therefore easier to implement and maintain.
However, if you do plan to migrate from LMS to Workplace Collaborative Learning eventually, you will likely need to do the following:
- Re-train your organization on how to use the new learning system.
- Re-train instructors on how to leverage the new features of Workplace Collaborative Learning.
- Train your administrators on Workplace components.
- Modify your courses (for instance, tracking methods, course structure, and so on).
- Modify interfaces/customizations/integrations already in place.
- Re-customize the user interface.
To avoid these issues, you may want to consider implementing Workplace Collaborative Learning now. This may be a bit more expensive in the short run, but in the long run could help your organization save money on implementation costs.
LMS 1.0.5 SP2 is currently on target for the second half of 2005, and additional service packs are planned in 2006. Plans beyond 2006 have not been finalized, though as we stated earlier, all significant new features and improvements will be added to Workplace Collaborative Learning.
Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 is just the beginning of a new way to experience learning within an organization. Significant improvements will be added in upcoming releases, including enhanced APIs to integrate easier with e-commerce applications, human capital management systems, and support for dynamic search of learning content. Other proposed features include integration of learning objects in business process modeling, enhanced offline learning capabilities, and enhanced content search, assembly, and delivery.
Ultimately, the choice between LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning lies with you. This article provides some points to consider when making this decision. These points include the new features included in Workplace Collaborative Learning, the new supported directory and application servers in Workplace Collaborative Learning, and the migration cost when moving from LMS to Workplace Collaborative Learning.
While Workplace Collaborative Learning may seem to be the logical choice for organizations looking to deploy a new online learning platform, customers that need to implement a temporary training solution, or need to implement a very large solution (more than 50,000 user population and/or more than 1,000 concurrent users), may choose LMS instead; at least in the short term. In addition, if you have no need for advanced collaboration features, skills and competencies tracking, or user partitions based on directory attributes, LMS may be the learning system for you.
In summary, LMS is simpler to implement and learn, has proven to scale for more than 1,000 concurrent users, and has been on the market for more than three years. Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5, on the other hand, contains all the features offered in the LMS stream. In addition, Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 adds more features, is supported on more platforms, supports more LDAP directory servers and more languages, and has significant performance improvements and enhancements. Workplace Collaborative Learning also allows you to track skills and competencies for employees within an enterprise. And it integrates seamlessly with other IBM Workplace products. If you still have any doubts, questions, or concerns about the differences between LMS and Workplace Collaborative Learning, don’t hesitate to engage our services specialists!
- The developerWorks: Lotus article, "The evolution of Lotus e-Learning Software," summarizes the release-by-release development of LMS features.
- For more information about the benefits and features of IBM’s learning offerings, visit IBM's Learning Web site.
- The Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5 Release Notes contain the latest information on supported platforms, operating systems, directory servers, and so on.
- Get involved in the developerWorks community by participating in
developerWorks blogs.
Luis Benitez is a Consulting IT Specialist with IBM TechWorks. Luis leads the Lotus Connections community within IBM and has been working on early adopter customer deployments of Lotus Connections since January 2007. Luis joined IBM TechWorks in early 2008, and prior to that he worked as a consultant for IBM Software Services for Lotus. You can reach Luis at Luis_Benitez@us.ibm.com.
Table of contents
Local resources
Tags
Use the slider bar to see more or fewer tags.
For articles in technology zones (such as Java technology, Linux, Open source, XML), Popular tags shows the top tags for all technology zones. For articles in product zones (such as Info Mgmt, Rational, WebSphere), Popular tags shows the top tags for just that product zone.
For articles in technology zones (such as Java technology, Linux, Open source, XML), My tags shows your tags for all technology zones. For articles in product zones (such as Info Mgmt, Rational, WebSphere), My tags shows your tags for just that product zone.
Popular article tags |
My article tagsSkip to tags list
Popular article tags |
My article tags
