Elearning FAQ - get to grips with the concepts

(Updated 21/11 2019)

This FAQ gives you a quick explanation of the most important concepts within digital learning and e-learning.

Normally, the term digital learning covers all use of IT for learning purposes. If the goal is for someone to learn something and computers are involved to facilitate the learning process, then it is digital learning. We are not talking about someone writing an assignment in a word processing program on a computer, but about the computer either mediating or facilitating the learning process.

The concept of digital learning is relatively new. Previously, the word e-learning or e-learning was used to describe learning via computer, in a similar way to how e-commerce means trading via computer. But partly because e-learning has acquired a fairly fixed meaning, and probably also because there is so much bad e-learning, someone invented the concept of digital learning - perhaps also to signal that this is something completely new (without this necessarily being the case).

E-learning is typically a multimedia presentation that combines text, video, audio and images. Information is conveyed and users can subsequently work interactively with the material, often in the form of questions, small exercises or small learning games. The idea is that the user can use the material when they need it and have time for it. Another advantage is that you can take the material without being dependent on others, e.g. a teacher.

It is typically companies that use e-learning. Within formalized learning schools, people primarily talk about digital learning, although there is considerable overlap, there are also differences in the culture and purpose of learning.

Companies that use e-learning typically need to be able to document that users have received the e-learning, see answers to any tests and perhaps issue diplomas. If such a documentation need exists, it is relevant to use the SCORM standard, which makes it easy to collect data about the user's interactions with the material in a Learning Management System , abbreviated as LMS .

In Danish, we can't really figure out whether it's called e-learning or e-learning, and whether it's with or without a hyphen. Previously, e-learning was also called online learning, distance learning, or CBT (Computer Based Training), or WBT (Web Based Training).

E-learning is typically most suitable for homogeneous target groups who need to learn something basic.

If the target group or topic becomes too narrow, it typically becomes either too expensive to develop, or the target groups too difficult to reach. You risk creating something that is too difficult for beginners and too boring for experts.

E-learning is also good if there are financial, time or geographical challenges that make it impossible to bring together teachers and students at the same time and place. It is often used for mandatory training, for example in the field of occupational health and safety, but can be used for many other things, for example for training new employees, also called onboarding , training in the maintenance of technical equipment, the use of IT systems such as the office package and much more.

E-learning is especially good if you can answer yes to one or more of these questions:

Another advantage of e-learning is that you can learn when you need to. This also means that the risk of forgetting what you have learned is much lower. In English, this is called Just in time learning .

Normally, e-learning is carried out by the user clicking on a link in an e-learning portal, called a Learning Management System (LMS), or in an email, after which the e-learning material opens in a browser and the user can interact with it.

Normally, the LMS will store information about how the user interacts with the e-learning material. What did the user answer to questions? How long did the user spend on the content? Has the user seen all the content? and much more. If the e-learning material contains a test, the LMS will also store information about how the user performed in the test and often provide the option for the user to print a diploma.

The communication between the LMS and the e-learning content usually uses the e-learning standard SCORM .

Within SCORM, a distinction is made between the (e-learning) content and the platform it is distributed in, the LMS. It may sound a bit strange, but there is a good reason for that.

Now that we have the concepts, e-learning and other digital learning can also be carried out via a tablet or a smartphone. In such cases, some might call it mobile learning, and not e-learning. I would call this kind of thing e-learning or digital learning delivered on a mobile phone. You can get a little out of breath - and tired - of all the many buzzwords. I mention them so that you as a reader know what they mean, not to bury yourself in buzzwords. Previously, the tools used to develop e-learning did not have particularly good support for mobile phones. Therefore, it was perhaps more important to be precise if it was e-learning delivered on a mobile phone. Today, many of the technical problems of delivering e-learning on mobile phones have disappeared. However, this does not mean that you do not have to take special considerations if content is to be delivered on a mobile phone. Quite obviously, the screen size is much smaller and this must of course be taken into account when designing e-learning.

If you mix different learning methods, both digital and analog, it is called blended learning . For example, it could be e-learning combined with classroom teaching and webinars. Blended learning has unfortunately become a bit of a fad, and suppliers have sometimes given the impression that as long as it was blended learning, everything was good. Learning methods are like tools in a toolbox; the more different tools you have at your disposal, the greater the opportunity you have to put together exactly the tools that provide the best solution. But it is clear that if you use a saw to drive nails in and a hammer to saw, you will not get a good solution. The same is true of learning methods. Blended learning does not in itself ensure good learning, but if you put together the different learning methods in a way that they exploit the different strengths they each have, you can create a really good solution. We will return to blended learning later.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a system that can be used to manage students and e-learning. In most Learning Management Systems, you can see reports on which users have taken which courses and how they have performed in the courses they have taken. The system is said to “track” what users do (i.e. log their activity).

According to the defunct e-learning encyclopedia www.elearningatlas.com, there were more than 550 different LMSs in 2013. My guess is that it was too low. But whether there are 500 or 1000 is almost irrelevant, there are far too many to familiarize yourself with them all. There are large open source LMSs, especially aimed at formalized learning (Canvas LMS, Moodle) and commercial Enterprise solutions that are often part of large HR or ERP systems (SAP, Successfactors LMS, Cornerstone on Demand, etc.), as well as a whole forest of smaller providers that offer specialized LMSs (such as our own Activate LMS ). Some support administration of attendance education, others can do personality tests and performance measurements, and so on. Some systems call themselves LMSs without supporting SCORM (!). It really is a jungle and you have to be careful.

Some of the largest solutions take 6 months to roll out in a large organization. Typically, LMS is delivered as cloud solutions where you pay a price per user per month or year and perhaps not surprisingly, LMS is available in many price ranges.

Since there are so many LMSs, it is difficult to come up with a general description that fits all of them, but here is a suggestion of what an LMS should be able to do at a minimum.

Many LMSs are designed more to ensure that an organization can document the training a user has received than to provide the user with a good environment to learn in. In addition, far from all learning that takes place in e-learning modules can be documented in an LMS with SCORM. In organizations, there is often also a lot of informal knowledge and therefore a lot of informal learning that is typically not supported very well in classic LMSs. As a countermeasure to the somewhat boring image that LMSs have received, a new type of learning platform has popped up. It is called a Learning Experience Platform , with the somewhat pop-up abbreviation LXP. There is probably - also - an element of old LMS wine in new marketing bottles in LXP, but LXP promises to give users more personal and social "learning experiences". I cross my fingers and hope for the best, but reserve the right to be skeptical.

See What is a Learning Management System?

See What is a Learning Management System?

Yes, you can – it all depends on your needs. If you need to know who is taking a particular e-learning course and how they answered questions, whether they passed, spent more than 10 minutes, etc., there is a good chance that you need an LMS. If you simply want to convey some knowledge to a number of people, you might want to consider whether a video or some web pages on the intranet wouldn’t give you the same thing. The important thing is whether you want to “track”/log how users are doing.

Learning Management Systems come in many different price ranges and billing models. Prices vary widely, from “free”/open source to very expensive. LMS are most often sold with a price per user from about 60 DKK/user/year to over 300 DKK/user/year for 500 users. (500 users is usually not considered to be a lot of users).

The price typically depends on whether you buy many or few users. LMS are often sold in modules with a base price per user for basic functionality, where you then pay extra if you want, for example, a Social Learning module (forums, Wikis, etc.), integration with Active Directory or SharePoint, etc. The price also depends on whether you want to host it yourself or whether you buy a hosted LMS.

In any case, you should think carefully about your needs when choosing. In general, we see that most LMSs can do far more than individual organizations need, and that customers therefore often end up paying more than they need to.

LCMS stands for Learning Content Management System. A system in which you can develop (E)learning content via the web. Articulate Rise is an example of an LCMS. It's a bit of an old term that isn't used much anymore.

Previously, CMS was used to refer to a COURSE Management System. But now CMS is used to refer to a CONTENT Management System (which is typically used to create internet/intranet sites). Now the term Learning Management System (LMS) is used instead of COURSE Management System.

Programs that can develop e-learning are called authoring tools. The most commonly used are Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise and Adobe Captivate. There are open source tools – however, it is difficult to find a good free tool. Read more about authoring tools here: Which programs should you use to create e-learning and how much do they cost?

SCORM is a standard that ensures that your e-learning content and Learning Management System (LMS) can “talk to each other”. This means, among other things, that you can move your content to another LMS if you need to change suppliers – without having to pay the price to have it converted. It also means that you can buy standard courses from other suppliers and mix them with your own developed e-learning courses.

SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Resource Model and is a standard that was developed at the behest of the US government.

SCORM can be compared to a file format such as PDF. Just as you can store Word documents and images, you can also store different e-learning content in SCORM format. Unlike a PDF, SCORM consists of several files that are packaged as a zip file, and we therefore talk about SCORM packages, not SCORM files. You can easily check whether a zip file is a SCORM package because SCORM packages must contain a file called IMSmanifest.xml.

SCORM comes in different versions: SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004. SCORM 2004 comes in 4 different versions, so you can say that something is SCORM 2004 3rd edition.

SCORM replaced its predecessor AICC , and the intended successor to SCORM is called xApi. xApi was originally called TinCan.

If you're getting really tired of all the abbreviations and versions, I can understand you.

In practice, there is very little difference between the different versions of SCORM. The SCORM versions can be confusing, but you can typically find out which versions of SCORM your LMS supports. Otherwise, you have to experiment by, for example, creating a SCORM package with each major version, i.e. 1.2 and SCORM 2004 4th. Most support 1.2 and many also support 2004. Once you have figured out which version you need to use, nothing typically changes.

The best way to answer that question is to look at what the world looked like before SCORM was invented:

Shortly after people found out how to use computers for all the things we use them for today, they also found out how to use them to deliver education to people. At the time, it was called distance learning or CBT ( Computer Based Training ). Many companies built e-learning portals where they could both develop and deliver the content. Over time, companies realized that this had some unfortunate consequences:

The most important one was that it was typically technically impossible to move content from one e-learning portal to another; if your company had developed a lot of great content, you couldn't simply take it with you to a new platform.

Here is a little story that illustrates the problem. At one point we were contacted by a large French bank. The bank had been at the forefront of using e-learning - before SCORM was invented - and they had chosen a platform in the late nineties and subsequently developed almost 1000 e-learning modules. After many years, they came to the conclusion that the platform they were using was no longer up to date. Since the almost 1000 modules could not be moved, it meant that if they changed platforms they would also lose all their content. A very expensive decision that actually postponed the decision for a few years. When they finally decided to move to a more up-to-date platform, we spent a few months helping them package their content into SCORM so that it could be moved.

In addition to the bank's inability to move their content, this story also shows that unhealthy vendor lock-in can easily arise. Without SCORM, the situation is that if an e-learning platform vendor is unable or unwilling to change their platform to meet the needs of their customer, the customer has little say.

One advantage of SCORM is that it makes it possible to choose a tool according to your needs in terms of content. If you need to be able to record what is happening on your screen, you can choose a tool that is good for that, and if you need to develop content that is more like PowerPoint, you can choose another. So you can choose the best tool for the task. If it can save as SCORM, it can run in the LMS. Tools that can save as SCORM are called authoring tools . Authoring tools are available both as programs that are installed on a computer and as online products where you develop via your browser. The online products are also sometimes called LCMS , which stands for Learning Content Management System .

There are quite a few LMSs in which it is also possible to develop content, i.e. they consist of an LMS and an LCMS. It may sound appealing at first glance to have it all in one solution. But now I want to reveal one of the industry's dirty tricks: There are many LMSs that are SCORM compatible, i.e. they can handle SCORM content, but where content developed in the platform's LCMS is not SCORM compatible, or cannot be immediately moved to another platform. If you go with such a solution, you end up with a vendor dependency that SCORM was originally developed to avoid.

One last advantage I would like to highlight is that SCORM makes it easier to purchase standard courses on everything from IT security, using the office suite to how to become a better leader.

Oops, then write or call us - we will help you.

Are you looking for help developing e-learning , or would you like a course on e-learning where you learn how to create e-learning yourself - we can also help you.

You can learn more about developing e-learning in these articles:

If you are interested in e-learning pedagogy/ e-learning didactics, you can read these articles.

Tomas Pødenphant Lund

If you found this blog post interesting, you might also like Tomas' book Super Learning 1: The DNA of Learning .

The book explores concepts like "the self-learning brain" and "catastrophic forgetting" while delving into the five critical aspects of learning:

He talks about the bottlenecks in learning so that you can create optimal conditions for learning, and you also get concrete tools for developing learning material.

Read more here: https://superlaering.dk

Tomas is an expert in learning and e-learning.

He believes in good teaching, humor, creative solutions and communication at eye level.

He is an expert in e-learning standards such as SCORM and TinCan, learning management systems (LMS), and the authoring tool Articulate Storyline.