As far as functions for the LMS, all I’ve counted on in the post is a course catalog, enrollment and completion data…noting that ideally (only) LMS would do some cataloging and pointing to informal resources, e.g. “here is a community of practice that relates to your learning goal.”

I personally don’t see desirability or benefit of an LMS literally hosting things like mailing lists, forums, wikis, blogs and other collaboration workspaces. There are already good opensource applications for all of these that an LMS vendor would be challenged to exceed. As these same applications are also used in day-to-day work (or should be) the learner should already be familiar with user interfaces and not feel challenged to link out of the LMS to these other applications used for informal learning.

As far as reporting subsystem, with my hands-on experience with one of the top enterprise proprietary solutions I was disappointed with the limited out-of-the-box reporting and analytics capabilities and also with the amount of work to export to a separate reporting subsystem.

Bottom-line, keep the LMS around for what it does (can) do well: providing the database for formal learning and the handling enrollments, scheduling and such…but don’t try to make it the center of all things learning. Construct dashboard capabilities with a stand-alone application which takes export from not only the LMS but also informal learning applications.

The deeper question is “what to track / measure” in informal learning. Two simplistic answers for now: 1) business results for learning programs overall…not trying to split-out impact of formal versus informal components, 2) some usage data to address the general question of is the informal learning opportunity message sticking and being acted on? For example, are the forums being used? Trends from this should guide investment in e.g. internal marketing.

It’s so interesting that you’ve brought the LMS into the PLE discussion. I’ll admit that I am currently skeptical about the ability of any LMS to provide some of the functions you are talking about – though I hope I’m wrong. I also wonder what your thoughts are on the track-it vs. don’t-bother aspect. Do we want to go through the LMS for so much? I’m riding the formal/informal line myself right now, and I am constantly wondering where my natural tendancy toward structure goes too far and tries to corral the informal too much. How do we (the learning professionals, the learning functions) use the LMS, collaborative and networking tools, and be advocates of the learning, without formalizing the informal? Ugh – so much to think about, such a delicate balance.

Happy Friday. – AA