Microsoft releases Learning Content Development System

Microsoft released a free community edition of its e-learning authoring tool, called LCDS. They will not get the creativity award for the name of the product, but after a first look, the tool seems very useful. 

Some highlights:

  • runs on Windows XP and Vista (needs to be run as administrator), requires .Net framework 2.0
  • development is “template-based” according to the traditional instructional design (read, watch, interact, tryp, play)
  • supports multiple languages (including Dutch, yes!)
  • creates native SCORM 1.2 compliant content by default
  • includes a “player” for stand alone viewing outside an LMS
  • interactions, simulations can be created in Flash and… Silverlight, what were you thinking 🙂

I followed quite some e-learning courses on the Microsoft Learning platform, and they were probably created with this tool. Very consistent, not very Flashy, but clear, concise and to the point. My kind of courses 😉 

I hope to get some time soon to create a course, and share it with you. “Brandjes blussen, the sequel” (inside joke…)

Find your way in the Office 2007 ribbon

My colleague Johan pointed me to some interesting Microsoft tools that make the migration towards Office 2007 (and its new Ribbon) much easier.

If you knew where a certain feature was located in 2003 (e.g. in Tools, Options), you can either use an interactive guide that really shows you where it is in 2007, or you can use an Excel reference file to look it up.

Have a look at https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Reference-Locations-of-Word-2003-commands-in-Word-2007-154D4788-DA09-4818-B7E3-163B0F98D34B

Use one Site Collection or multiple Site Collections?

Some important concepts:

  • a site collection is a unit of information belonging together; if information should be isolated/secured, it could be a separate site collection;
  • having multiple site collections might require some additional development (e.g. packaging content types or site columns that you want to reuse in different site collections in features);
  • a lot of built-in web parts only work inside a site collection, not across site collections;
  • it’s good to have separate site collections for a corporate, governed intranet and the wild wild west of collaboration 🙂