Transform L&D experiences at scale with structured learning content

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Ready to deliver consistent and personalized learning content at scale for your learners? In this episode of the Content Operations podcast, Alan Pringle and Bill Swallow share how structured content can transform your L&D content processes. They also address challenges and opportunities for creating structured learning content.

There are other people in the content creation world who have had problems with content duplication, having to copy from one platform or tool to another. But I will tell you, from what I have seen, the people in the learning development space have it the worst in that regard—the worst.

— Alan Pringle

Related links:

• The challenges of structured learning content (podcast)
• DITA and learning content
• Rise of the learning content ecosystem with Phylise Banner (podcast)
• Flexible learning content with the DITA Learning and Training specialization

LinkedIn:

• Alan Pringle
• Bill Swallow

Transcript:

Disclaimer: This is a machine-generated transcript with edits.

Introduction with ambient background music

Christine Cuellar: From Scriptorium, this is Content Operations, a show that delivers industry-leading insights for global organizations.

Bill Swallow: In the end, you have a unified experience so that people aren’t relearning how to engage with your content in every context you produce it.

Sarah O’Keefe: Change is perceived as being risky, you have to convince me that making the change is less risky than not making the change.

Alan Pringle: And at some point, you are going to have tools, technology, and process that no longer support your needs, so if you think about that ahead of time, you’re going to be much better off.

End of introduction

AP: Hey, everybody, I’m Alan Pringle.

BS: I’m Bill Swallow.

AP: And today, Bill and I want to talk about structured content in the learning and development space. I would say, the past two years or so, we have seen a significantly increased demand of organizations who want to apply structured content to their learning and development processes, and we want to share some of the things those organizations have been through and what we’ve learned over the past few months, because I suspect there are other people out there who could benefit from this information.

BS: Oh, absolutely.

AP: So let’s talk about, really, the drivers, what are the things that people, content creators in the learning development space, what’s driving them to it? One of them off the bat is so much content, so, so very much content, on so many different delivery platforms. That’s one that I know of immediately, what are some of the other ones?

BS: Oh, yeah, you have just the core amount of content, the number of deliverables, and the duplication of content across all of them.

AP: That is really the huge one, and I know there are other people in the content creation world who have had problems with content duplication, having to copy from one platform or tool to another. But I will tell you, from what I have seen, the people in the learning development space have it the worst in that regard—the worst.

BS: Didn’t they applaud you when you showed up at a conference with a banner that said end copy, paste?

AP: Pretty much, it’s true. That very succinct message raised a lot of eyebrows, because they are in the position, unfortunately, in learning and development, having to do a lot of copying and pasting, and part of the reason for that copying and pasting is, a lot of times, the different platforms that we’ve mentioned, also, different audiences. I need to create this version for this region, or this particular type of student at this location, so they’re copying and pasting over and over again to create all these variants for different audiences, which becomes unmanageable very quickly.

BS: Yeah, copy, pasting, and then, reworking. And then, of course, when they update it, they have to copy, paste, and rework again to all the other places it belongs, and then, they have to handle it in however many languages they’re delivering the training in.

AP: So now, everything is just blown up. I mean, how many layers of crap, and I’m just going to say it, do these people have to put up with? And there are many, many, many.

BS: Worst parfait ever.

AP: Yeah, no, that is not a parfait I want to share, I agree with you on that. So let’s talk about the differences between, say, the techcomm world and the learning and development world and their expectations for content. Let’s talk about that, too, because it is a different focus, and we have to address that.

BS: So techcomm really is about efficiency and production, so being able to amass quite a wide mass of content and put it out there as quickly as possible, or put it out there as efficiently as possible. Learning content kind of flips that on its head, and it wants to take quality content and build a quality experience around it, because it’s focused on enabling people to learn something directly.

AP: And techcomm people, we’re not saying you’re putting out stuff that is wrong or half ass. That is not what we mean, I want to be real clear here. What we mean is, there is a tendency to focus on efficiency gains, and getting that help set, getting that PDF, getting that wiki, whatever thing that it is that you’re producing, getting that stood up as quickly as possible, whereas on the learning side, speed is not usually the thing that you’re trying to use to sell the idea of structured content. I don’t think that’s going to win a lot of converts in the learning space. I do think, however, you can make the argument, if you create this single source of truth so you can reuse content for different audiences, different locations, different delivery platforms, and you’re using the same consistent information across all of that, you are going to provide better learning outcomes, because everybody’s getting the same information. Regardless of what audience they are or what platform that they’re learning, whether it’s live instructor-led training, something online, whatever else, you’re still getting the correct same information, whereas if you were copying and pasting all that, you might’ve forgot to update it in one place as a content creator, and then, someone ends up getting the wrong information, a student, a learner, and that’s when you’re not in the optimal learning experience situation.

BS: Right, and it’s not to say that every single deliverable gets the exact same content, but they get a slice from the same shared centralized repository of content so that they’re not rewriting things over and over and over again. And they’re still able to do a lot of high-quality animations, build their interactives, put together their slide presentations, everything like that, but use the content that’s stored centrally rather than having to copy and paste it again and again and again.

AP: Yeah, and let’s talk about, really, the primary goals for moving to structure content for learning and development folks. We’ve already talked about reuse quite a bit, that’s a big one. Write it one time, use it everywhere, and that also leads to creating profiling, different audiences, content for different audiences.

BS: Right, I mean, these goals really are no different than what you see in techcomm, and what techcomm has been using for the past 15, 20, 25 years. It is that reuse, that smart reuse, so write it once, use it everywhere, no copy paste, having those profiling attributes and capabilities built in so that you can produce those variants for beginner learners versus expert learners versus people in different regional areas where the procedure might be a little bit different, producing instructor guides as well as learner guides. All of these different ways of mixing and matching, but using the same content set to do that.

AP: Yeah, it’s like one of our clients said, and I have to thank them forever for bringing this up, they were bogged down in a world of continuous copying and pasting over and over and over again, and maintaining multiple versions of what should’ve been the same content, and they said, quote, “We want to get off the hamster wheel.” And that is so true and so fitting, and we probably owe them royalties for saying this over and over again, because such a good phrase. But it really did capture, I think, a big frustration that a lot of people in the learning and development space have creating content, because they do have to maintain so many versions of content.

BS: And those versions likely are stored in a decentralized manner, so they could be on multiple different servers, they could be on multiple different laptops or PCs, they could be on thumb drives in some random drawer that are updated maybe once every two, three years. So being able to pull everything together into a central repository and structure it so that it can be intelligently reused and remixed, there’s so many benefits to that.

AP: Yeah, and in regard to the remixing, the bottom line is, you want the ability to publish to all your different platforms. I believe the term people like to use is omnichannel publishing, so you basically can do push-button publishing to basically any delivery need that you have, whether it’s an instructor versus student guide for training you’re having live, e-learning, even scripts for video. Even when you’re dealing with a lot of multimedia content, there is still text involved, underpinnings of that content, audio and video, there’s still probably bits and pieces of that, that can come from your single source of content, because at the core of it, it’s text-based, even though if the delivery of it is a video or audio.

BS: Now, we’ve had structured content for a good couple decades, at least-

AP: At least, yeah.

BS: … but there really is a reason why the learning world really hasn’t latched onto it completely, and it really comes down to the different types of content that they need to produce versus what traditionally a techcomm group would do. So right off the bat, there are all the different tests, quizzes, and so forth, all the assessments that are built into a learning curriculum. There was never really anything built to handle those in traditional structured authoring platforms in schemas.

AP: And there are solutions now that will let you handle assessments and different types of questions, and things like that.

BS: But the whole approach to producing learning content, it’s quite similar to techcomm and to other classic content development, but it’s also quite unique in its own right, and we do have to make sure that all of those different needs, whether it be the assessments, any interactives that need to be developed, making sure that you tie in a complete learning plan, and perhaps even business logic to your content, making sure all that can be baked in intelligently so that we’re able to produce the things that we need to produce for trainers.

AP: Yeah, and now, especially, you have to be able to create content that integrates easily with the learning management system, which has its own workflows, it’s got tracking, it tracks progress, it scores quizzes, it keeps track of what classes you’ve taken, prerequisites, all of that stuff, that is a whole delivery ecosystem, and structured content can help you communicate with an LMS and create content that is LMS friendly by baking in a lot of the things that you just talked about.

BS: And the content really does boil down to a more granular and targeted presentation to the audience rather than techcomm, which is more of a soup to nuts, kind of everything in the kitchen sink approach to offer.

AP: Yeah, and then, there’s also the whole live delivery aspect, that is not something that’s really part of techcomm at all.

BS: I wouldn’t want someone there reading a manual to me.

AP: No, nor would I. Well, it might be a good way to treat insomnia, but that’s not what we’re here for. But you do have to consider, the assessments are a big difference from a lot of other content that is a good fit for the structure world, and then, the possibility of live instruction, that’s also another big difference, which, still, there are structured content solutions that can help you with both of those very distinct learning and development content situations. So I think it’s fair to say, based on talking to a lot of people at conferences focused on learning, and a lot of our clients, that the traditional way of creating learning and development content, it is not scalable. The copy and paste angle in particular is just not sustainable in any way, shape, or form.

BS: No, you have so many hours in a day, so if you need to start producing more, you really need to start adding more people. And you add more people, then you have the likelihood that more things could go wrong with the content, or the content could get-

AP: Will go wrong.

BS: … could get out of sync with itself.

AP: Yeah. Well, let’s talk also a little more about some of the challenges. We’ve talked about the interactivity, how that and the assessments, that’s something that’s kind of particular that you have to solve for in the learning space. Let’s talk about the P word, PowerPoint.

BS: PowerPoint. Yeah, being able to pull focus slides together, which really would likely have a very small subset of a course’s content built within them, unless you’re producing a wall of text per PowerPoint. Those are quite unique to the space, so you don’t see much in techcomm where things are delivered via PowerPoint, or you hopefully don’t.

AP: No, PowerPoint is great because it’s wide open and you can do a lot of things with it, PowerPoint is bad because it’s wide open and you could do a lot of things with it. That’s the problem with PowerPoint.

BS: And a template’s only as useful as those who follow it.

AP: Exactly. And now, you mentioned templates, structure content is a way to templatize and standardize your content, and I’m sure that can rub people the wrong way. My slides need to be special, this, that, and the other. There’s a continuum here of, I want to do whatever I want to the point of sloppy, or I can do things within this particular set of confines so there is consistency. And again, I think it’s fair to say, providing consistency for different learners with slide decks, that is going to make some better outcomes instead of a free-for-all, I can do whatever I want scenario. And I’m sure there are people out there who are going to kick and scream and disagree with me, but that’s a fight we’re just going to have to have folks.

BS: Well, no, it provides us a consistent experience throughout, rather than having some jarring differences from lesson to lesson or course to course.

AP: Yeah, yeah, and I think there’s one thing, too, that, in addition to the PowerPoint angle, with the learning and development space, there is this focus on, we need to create, this thing went off, that thing went off, and this other thing went off. There’s still standardization you can do among your different delivery targets that will streamline things, create consistency, and therefore, a better learning experience. I do believe that’s true, even though some people at first in particular can find it very confining.

BS: Oh, right, I mean, it just takes the development of the end user experience, I don’t want to say completely out of the learning content developer’s hands, but it kind of frees them up to better frame the content for the lesson rather than worrying about the fit and finish of the product.

AP: Yeah, and let’s focus now on some of the options out there in the structure content world for learning and development content. There’s several out there, let’s talk about what’s on the table.

BS: It comes down to two different types of systems, one would be a learning component management system, so it’s a system that’s more built for learning content specifically.

AP: Yeah, I would say it’s purpose built, I agree, yeah.

BS: Yeah, and it functions the same way as a lot of, I guess what we would call the traditional techcomm component content management systems do, where you’re able to develop in fragmented pieces, in a structured way, in a centralized manner, and intelligently reuse and remix all of these different components to produce some type of deliverable.

AP: Right, so you can therefore, within this system, set up things for different locations, different audiences, whatever else. And if you were moving into an LCMS or one of the other solutions we’re talking about, you are also going to make localization and translation much more efficient, and you’ll get stuff turned around in other languages for other locales much more quickly. So we’ve got the LCMS’s which are more proprietary, and then, on the flip side of that, let’s talk about DITA.

BS: So DITA does provide you with a decent starting point for developing your content, and we’ve helped several clients do this already, but a lot of the tools that are out there on the flip side, where the LCMS is targeted at developing learning content, a lot of the tools for DITA aren’t, so it requires a lot of customization on the tool chain, as well as in the content model, to get things up and running. However, DITA does give you an easier point of integration with any work that is being produced by your techcomm peers.

AP: Yeah, I do think it’s fair to say it’s a little more extensible, but the mere fact it is an open standard as an extensible means that it may take some configuring to make it exactly what you need it to be. And like Bill was saying, DITA has some custom structure that is a very good fit, it is specifically for learning and training, and you can further customize those customizations to match what you need. I will say, I think some of the assessment structures are not as robust as they should be, and we’ve had to customize those for some clients. So that’s another thing that you would have to kind of think about when you’re trying to make this decision, do I need to go with an LCMS, or do I want to go with DITA and a component content management system, and understand that I’m going to have to make some adjustments to make it more learning and development friendly?

BS: No matter which way you slice it, though, moving to any kind of a structured repository in a structured system really starts to open things up from a back end production point of view, while not necessarily forgoing a lot of the experience-driven design that goes into producing those different learning deliverables. It is a way to kind of become more efficient, and as Alan mentioned, avoid the copy and paste, which can be a nightmare to maintain over time.

AP: And at the same time, you do not have to throw out your standards for the quality of the content and the quality of the learning experience. You want to have structure, support, and bolster, and maintain those things, and don’t look at it as something that is going to degrade those things, because when used correctly, it can really help you maintain that level of quality and consistency that you really need for an outstanding learning experience. And with that, Bill, I think we can wrap up. Thank you very much.

BS: Thank you.

Outro with ambient background music

Christine Cuellar: Thank you for listening to Content Operations by Scriptorium. For more information, visit scriptorium.com or check the show notes for relevant links.