In this second and final part of our quest we try to answer the question What makes an authoring tool an LCMS . In this post we look more closely at the concept of workflow and collaboration.
Workflow is a slippery slope. Most people expect a system in which each part of your content can have a status, depending on which different people can perform different tasks with the content, interspersed with a flood of e-mails. In most implementations I have seen this works contra productive and irritating, causing the features to remain unused. EasyGenerator offers the possibility to move or copy (parts of) the content to another Workspace, where (depending the permissions) other users can continue working on it.
Let’s look at another aspect of collaboration, interacting with your client. More specific, facilitating and handling content reviews. Can you recognize the following situation? Your e-Learning course is ready to be reviewed by the client. You publish the product to SCORM, upload it to your LMS, create account(s) for the reviewer(s) and assign them the course.
Your client will now look at your content and, of course, has comments about the used media, text and questions. These comments reach you in the form of a large Word document, filled with print-screens. If you have had more than one reviewer, you soon have a stack of such documents.
The upcoming EasyGenerator 7.2 enhances this process greatly by introducing the 1-2-3 review system:
1. Invite reviewers by just entering their e-mail addresses
2. The reviewers launch the course by a link in the e-mail and can leave comments on each page
3. Their comments appear live in the EasyGenerator editor – in the context of the content!
During the review period, the course developers can continue their work, they can even react on the comments, providing direct feedback to the reviewer(s).
So yes, in our vision, EasyGenerator can be called an LCMS – with alternative and refreshing approaches to solving the industy’s problems.
