There are plenty of tools to help you create and visualize your online content. In fact, one of the biggest challenges after content creation is finding the best way to store, display, and access that information.
While a lot of these tools share similar sounding acronyms, their goals can be pretty different, especially if you're trying to create educational material and track how that's being used by your peers and employees. Here's what you need to know about LMS and CMS platforms, and how sometimes a combination of the two can be exactly what you're looking for.
What is an LMS?
A learning management system (LMS) is a platform used by higher learning institutions and corporations to help distribute educational content and track participation. These systems allow managers to utilize a variety of different content styles and sources by uploading them into a common database.
Then the company or institution can assign courses to different employees or learners, depending on their course requirements or job descriptions. Once a course has been assigned, an LMS enables easy tracking of individual participation. After a course has been successfully completed, an LMS can automatically create documentation of that completion for each individual learner or employee.
In industries like the medical field where certain safety or compliance courses are federally mandated, LMS platforms are a great way to monitor and ensure compliance with the governmental regulations.
What is a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is a way to create the framework around a website that both stores and determines how content is displayed. These systems can aggregate and manage most types of content like images, audio files, movies, text and most other commonly used web page elements.
A CMS can also determine things like public or private access to certain pages, how to respond to a returning visitor rather than a first time visitor, and most other aspects of running and maintaining a website. This is where most content managers make daily updates to their website and take care of certain SEO factors like meta tagging and image resizing scales.
How MedEd Manager Combines the Two
Both CMS and LMS platforms can lack certain functionality that allows for smooth transitions between content creation and education tracking. That's where combined systems, often known as learning content management systems (LCMS) come into play.
These LCMS platforms offer a lot more flexibility in the creating, organizing and storing of learning materials than other systems. MedEd Manager is an excellent example of how combining the two systems can provide industry specific advantages.
Because the CME field is very complex, a vertical-specific platform like MedEd Manager is pretty necessary to fully leverage the different requirements that each profession has. This software allows some key aspects of both LMS and CMS platforms like:
- A single database for everything from online courses to live events.
- Full eCommerce functionality including third-party fulfillment, payment integration and online sales.
- User management to control access from admin groups down to single user access.
- Complete mobile compatibility including for seamless data integration during live conferences.
- Form creation, execution and storage for future access.
- Full data reporting for anything from PARS to customized financial reports.
By combining the best that both CMS and LMS platforms have to offer, a dedicated system like MedEd Manager provides everything needed to run excellent CME programs without relying on multiple software programs and less-than-stellar workarounds.
Not only does that save time and money, it creates a better product for your CME offerings because it allows the creators to focus on an excellent experience with top-notch content.
