Does anyone still care about Learning Management Systems?

A few years back, the LMS ruled the day.  We were all told that we needed to buy this product to streamline course registration and track employee training.  Lots of this was due to regulatory pressures, probably largely influenced from the US.  Millions of corporate learning dollars were sucked up into the black hole of expensive enterprise software.  Smaller organizations were left with excel spreadsheets and paper files, as there was no real alternative for small business.  It kind of sucked to be honest.

I guess my subject today is pretty rhetorical, because companies do still care and there is a need for registering and tracking employee learning.  However, in today’s Web 2.0 world, there are lots more options:

Joomla, an open-source LMS and content authoring system (a fancy way of saying that you can create courses with their tools), which isn’t free, but is affordable.

Moodle – free to download, you just have to have a web-server to host it.  Open source.

Drupal (although I think you have to be a tinkerer to jump on this bandwagon)

We’ve also got some nifty course authoring systems to share:

Udutu – powered by Moodle, it allows you to build simulations and courses.

Thinkific– a local BC company which allows you to build and sell your own courses.

By the looks of it, you just need to come up with an unusual name,  and you could be in the running for the latest/coolest piece of technology!