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And Tata said, Let There Be Learning

After building 30 custom learning management systems, Tata Interactive Systems realized there just might be a market for a product in the e-learning space. On the heels of that realization comes the announcement of Learning Planet, an offering that is being called an enterprise learning content management system or LCMS.

A newcomer to CMSWire, Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) is a self proclaimed global leader in e-learning and a subsidiary of Tata Group. The Learning Planet product provides the ability to import and integrate third party learning materials along with supporting integration with external systems such as Oracle HRMS, PeopleSoft and SAP. With the international background of TIS, it comes as no surprise that Learning Planet has multilingual support allowing users to address an international audience.

Furthermore, Learning Planet’s feature set centers around six key areas:

Core LMS

• E-learning environments can be hosted and managed from within Learning Planet with support for virtual classrooms, videoconferencing, whiteboards, and desktop sharing
• Class attendance and test scores can be tracked and then used for report generation and classroom management
• Courses can be selected and purchased through an online payment gateway

Competency Management

• Gaps in skillsets can be identified and individualized training plans can be created based on the strengths and weaknesses of each user
• Succession plans can be created that identify the most eligible candidates regardless of the size of the enterprise
• A built-in “competency dashboard” is available that assists with identifying gaps and creating learning paths

Content Management

• Content generation is supported through the supplied authoring engine and authoring tools
• Content can be imported from legacy files with support for the following formats: Microsoft Word, PDF, Powerpoint, Flash, and HTML
• Video and audio in any format can be imported

Collaboration and Communication

• Availability of discussion forums, message boards, email, and chat
• Creation of interest groups with support for message threads, surveys, polls, file cabinets, file sharing, and publishing
• Administrative control of alerts, announcements, news, and promotions

Assessment

• Support for standards-based assessment allows for import and export of third-party standardized assessments
• Creation of five types of template-based assessments via an assessment engine that supports both synchronized and unsynchronized features
• Offline assignments can uploaded and downloaded with support for Microsoft Word, PDF, and Microsoft Powerpoint

Knowledge Management

• All digital resources within the LCMS are stored and distributed using a user-based rights management system
• Built-in search engine supports the location and bookmarking of learning objects
• Availability of a workflow-based approach for document management

While the effectiveness of e-learning and web based training is questionable, the inclusion of content management and collaboration features makes Learning Planet a compelling offering. For more information or to setup a free demo, visit Tata Interactive.

We would love to hear about your experiences with e-learning and web based instruction systems in the comments section below.