Educational institutions are confronted with a gigantic task of providing real-time information to their clientele amidst budgetary and human resource constraints. A simple html based static website could no longer provide this kind of service considering the demands. Gladly, the birth of Content Management System (CMS) provides a great deal of alleviation to this problem.  In fact, there is already what we call Educational CMS.

Educational CMS provides a dynamic flat-form to showcase the institution. It may include functionalities like online enrollment system, grading system and even course management systems. So, by CMS here, we do not limit it to the course management systems. Instead, we are talking about the system that provides venue for collaborative presentations.

As we have mentioned, the primary use of the Educational CMS is to provide all stakeholders with a venue to contribute their intellectual resources and materials to the school’s online presence. Many companies would like to claim that they have the capabilities to provide Educational CMS. Looking into Google’s directory alone will give you a list of more that four hundred sites for CMS. The task of choosing the right CMS to fit the need of the institution could already mean hours of hard labor.

Our hope is to provide guidelines for educational instructions in their struggle to land the right Educational CMS. We shall include in the series issues like hosting, costing, learning curve, security, after sales, content life cycle, functionalities and security. The discussion however will not provide boxed in answers; only guides. The mention of some companies in the article does mean that we are promoting them. The inclusion is random. The whole idea is to provide a comparison of existing providers.

Finally, this article will not delve into the politics of choosing. We understand very well that individual institutions have their own criteria in choosing the direction they want to take.

Education is really a thriving business. If you search Google with the keyword “Educational CMS”, you will be bombarded with a hundred and one pages of results!

Okay! Okay! That is an exaggeration. The point is really very simple. There are more
than a hundred companies that provide educational content management system (CMS) software be it fully customized or standard customizable software. Moving into the search would reveal that there are thousands more that discuss educational CMS.

What is an Educational CMS? It is a system that is primarily for educational institutions. It is an online tool that enhances lectures and trainings. It is directed at helping schools to improve educational experience.

The traditional educational institutions have an entirely unique way of choosing their CMS. Most of these institutions are really forced to work on very limited budgets. So, the choices they make will be shaped by budgetary constraints and some politics. Educational CMS providers that deal with traditional educational systems are forced to offer their products by module. Meaning, if the institution decides to increase the functionality of the CMS, they will have to pay extra.

Ironically, the targets for most businesses that provide the program and or the support of the Educational CMS are not really the traditional educational institutions. There are only a couple of traditional educational institutions that are capable of procuring or implementing their own Educational CMS. These companies are actually competing to get major businesses to subscribe to their service or their software for training purposes.

Why is this so? The future of a company depends on continuous education. This makes training vital to every successes and growth of the company. In this fast and competitive business sector, one cannot afford to stay idle for more than a month. Likewise, if you have something new to promote, your business would need a quick turn around to implement the training without really pulling out these people from their regular work.

This is where Education CMS would come in. In all software currently available in the market, there is no need for all people to sit at one time to discuss about something new. In fact, they can do the training or the lesson at their own pace. If I have a business, the training of a new employee does not need to take up much effort from the trainer. You simply allow the newbie to sit in front of the computer and give him/her the sequence of the modules to take.

Of course, these companies will not turn their head away from any traditional educational institutions once they come to them for assistance. The idea will always be, if they come to you for business they surely have the resources. If not, they could be a good name to help you market your products.

If there are many Educational CMS providers, our next question will be: do we have a guide on which system to choose? This is a topic that we will discuss in the next installment of the subject.

[just making sure this is not found somewhere else. the article has been rejected by a client due to the use of the blur in the definition of the acronym CMS] -My writing style]