We all have read about how traditional manufacturing jobs are rapidly disappearing in the U.S. and Western Europe. In reality, since the dawn of the information age, a new type of manufacturing job has emerged, the “digital” factory worker – software engineers, database architects, etc. Since these jobs are counted in the services sector and not manufacturing, people often overlook the fact that we are actually hiring many more workers in “digital” manufacturing than ever before in traditional industries, but the truth is that the skill requirements are much higher.

The “manufacturing” of software requires people to create, test and ship products in a systematic approach, as you would with physical goods like automobiles. In the case of software, or let’s say “digital products” in general, the “production systems” have undergone vast technological change, in the same way as traditional manufacturing techniques. The same is true for “digital content”, including training content and learning content management systems.

Back when I started as a software engineer, you wrote programs that were procedural in nature, self-contained, beginning to end. The system was a linear process. You really had no way to know if anyone else had built something similar before. And then came along came object-oriented programming and all of a sudden the “production system” changed. You could easily re-use code built before. Test systems emerged that allowed you to validate “modules” or components before the entire system was finished. Version control systems emerged to help you track changes and manage new revisions. While initially things took a little longer to build, the “system” allowed you to build new things much more rapidly as your library of “assets” grew. The on-going time and expense of maintenance decreased dramatically.

So what does this have to do with Learning Content Management Systems?

To begin with, what I constantly hear from Learning and Development departments is that they are faced with similar “production” problems. Do more with less… Customize, Localize, Globalize… If you start to think of developing learning content in the “manufacturing” metaphor, you can look at the history of traditional manufacturing and software “manufacturing” and see some very interesting parallels.

Like software, traditional manufacturing started with an assembly-line style production model. Eventually, a better manufacturing system was adopted that changed the way things were built. This is now known as the “Lean Manufacturing” model – based on the Toyota Production System. One of its key tenets is that you achieve cost reductions by eliminating waste, whether it is labor, materials, or other resources. Another is that it drastically reduces production cycle times.

Learning Content “Manufacturing” in the Training and Development world is undergoing the same transformation. It’s about building new systems that eliminate waste, improve quality and allow you rapidly adapt to customer needs. Unfortunately, many organizations still produce content using traditional production systems (not tools – while new tools have emerged, systems have often been overlooked).

Improvements in Learning Content development mean a new system, not a bunch of new tools with old processes. It’s about designing and building content components. Being able to find, re-use and re-purpose them without having to cut, paste, assemble, review and test over and over again. It’s about being customer driven. It’s about getting the right content to the consumer in the format they want when they want it. It’s about Lean Manufacturing techniques for Learning Content Management Systems.

And I think you know what happened to many companies that did not adopt the new manufacturing model …

So, what you really need is a new factory system. A Learning Content “Manufacturing” System, not one of those old LCMS products.

Intelligent content is content which is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. It is content that helps you and your customers get the job done. It’s content that is limited only by our imaginations.

With intelligent content you can:

• Automatically deliver to multiple channels
• Personalize content
• Enable customers to easily find the information they need no matter how complex their requirements
• Let your customers build their own unique information products
• Deepen your customer relationship
• Share content across organizational silos
• Manage content throughout its lifecycle
• Rapidly adapt information to changing needs

We love this conference because it stands for everything that Xyleme is trying, and succeeding to accomplish, in the training industry. That being said, training still lags pretty far behind other industries such as technical publications and product documentation when it comes to intelligent content.

So, Mark Hellinger, President and CEO of Xyleme, took the opportunity during the event’s panel discussion to provide his view on why this was the case, and how to effectively make the move from documentation to Learning & Development. Here are some of the highlights from his talk, ranked by the number of tweets on Mark’s discussion points:

Create new output models but retain ability to use existing materials

Despite the movement to e-learning and now mobile delivery, print-based materials are still critical. So, structure content components to allow for conversion to different formats and let audiences select appropriate delivery modes as their needs evolve.

#ic2010 68% training worldwide today is still not done online or as e-learning. Despite initiatives 10 years ago, progress = slow [Xyleme]

#ic2010 People in e-learning try to move to new online tools, but want to keep all the “old stuff” content. Often a mismatch. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 e-learning: challenge of training on-line, is that legacy content was created around classroom, paper-based model. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 PowerPoint is number one “e-learning” tool in the world. Also, the least structured authoring tool. Start from outside in [Xyleme]

Mark Hellinger, Xyleme: 68% of training world-wide is in person, instructor-led or virtual instructor led (not elearning) per ASTD #IC2010

68% of all training is instructor-led or virtually instructor-led. Mark Hellinger/Xyleme #IC2010

Mark Hellinger, Xyleme: Q: What’s the most commonly used training software in the world? A: PowerPoint. #IC2010

Learn that silos are the norm in L&D

Most global training & development groups are very decentralized, therefore effective collaboration is crucial. So, provide the right tools and processes for subject matter expert (SME) knowledge capture, review, and discussion for these dispersed teams.

#ic2010 “Silos are the norm in L&D” [Xyleme]

#ic2010 Tech Doc is often completely disconnected from training & development people. TD often part of HR; way down on food chain. [Xyleme]

Understand that single-source is a change management project not a technology implementation

A single-source L&D implementation is not a one-off project. It’s a paradigm shift for almost everyone involved. Nothing will bring a project crashing to the ground faster than not clearly setting expectations and properly managing the change management issues faced by each stakeholder.

#ic2010 Real challenge: how to you radically change the way that people are creating content and doing things. [Xyleme]

#ic2010 1: start with hi impact project 2: understand single-source is change mngmt project, not tech implement [Xyleme]

Recognize that content reuse and multi-channel publishing are only part of the success equation

Unlike traditional documentation, successful Learning & Development projects go far beyond content reuse and multi-modal delivery. They also find a way of efficiently integrating interactivity, tracking, and performance support into the content life cycle.

#ic2010 3: recognize that content reuse and multi-channel publishing are only PART of the success equation [Xyleme]

Support training industry standards – they especially matter for blended learning

In the training industry, multiple standards (e.g. SCORM, QTI, Common Cartridge) are designed to support different types of delivery platforms and may have little overlap. Blended learning (combined classroom, web-based, and on-demand) requires extraordinary content reuse across these widely accepted standards.

Support training industry standards – they especially matter for blended learning. Mark Hellinger/Xyleme #IC2010

Examine the best practices of online universities

Online universities (e.g. University of Phoenix) are becoming common ways to earn degrees – even top-tier schools are offering online programs. Recognize that educational content will need to be effectively reused and delivered to this critical channel or lose a valuable source of revenue.

#ic2010 Notice changing trend: online Universities like Phoenix are doing well; traditional institutions are struggling for funds [Xyleme]

Thanks to Ann Rockley for putting on a great event. Till next year.

In contrast, Xyleme LCMS is a “component-based, XML publishing solution”. Following a proven single source XML model, you can reuse content at very low levels. For example, this means that you can take a paragraph out of a topic originally written for instructor-led training and reuse it inside of a page in a web course. Or show the steps in a procedure in the remediation loop of an assessment. This is particularly important when creating multiple derivatives of courses which vary only slightly in content.

XML-based publishing systems have extraordinary return on investment results. They have been proven this over time across many industries. By applying these same techniques to learning content, we can achieve extraordinary ROI results for training and development departments as well.

Suppose you wanted to have the same course materials offered in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. You have an on-line course, a Word-based study guide and PowerPoint-based instructor slides to update. In the XML-based world, we can have the same course dynamically substitute “Labour” for “Labor”, “Familiarise” for “Familiarize” and more complex phrases like “Chartered Accountant” for “Certified Public Accountant”. I am not talking about a find and replace and copying to a new file. Or cutting and pasting into a new file. Then spending a lot of time re-checking the formatting. In Xyleme LCMS, a simple operation does this for you automatically. We are able to manipulate and transform component content while maintaining a single source of content. It’s all in the underlying XML technology for building, storing and publishing reusable learning content.

As I said above, I am not surprised by the study about LCMS and RLO’s. The traditional approach for creating asset-based objects has some utility, but if you want to dramatically improve the return on investment, you should be thinking about moving to component-based learning content development.

My first job out of graduate school was as an Interactive Designer for a small but growing multimedia development firm. I was hired to be part of a multi-million dollar project for a major automotive manufacturer. We were creating CD-ROM based training for service technicians. Each course cost over $1 million dollars! They were fantastic, cutting-edge, pushing the envelope in every way.

Fast forward to today… budgets and timelines are shrinking, your audience is global and change is a constant thing. Combine that with the fact approximately 70% of all training is still delivered instructor- led and what are you to do? Now-a-days it’s about getting something up quickly that is the right content, in the right size to the right device so employees and customers can do what they need to do.

So how do you get there? One approach being used by a number of our clients is a strategy of “iterative” improvement, moving in stages from pure instructor-led to a blended model. The idea is to start with your instructor-led materials… be they Word, FrameMaker or PowerPoint, and get them into a single-source content model. This will allow you to “publish” all of the classroom materials (Instructor Guide, Student Guide, Slide Deck, Wall Chart, Handouts, Classroom Setup, etc.) and ALSO get your first “iteration” on e-Learning, what you might refer to as “e-Learning Lite”. Once you have a structure to react to, you can look for places where the instructor led approach just doesn’t work online. Once you’ve found places that need something different for online delivery, you can start to create alternative content with interactions and richer media. From the single source of content, you can now tag those pieces only to be used in the e-Learning and keep the original content for the instructor-led course.

For example, let’s say that you’re teaching a technical product. In the instructor-led version of the course, you might do a live demo but for the e-Learning you’d use a recorded demo. Or in an instructor-led course you might have students identify parts of a piece of equipment by pointing to it in the room, but online you could create an image map to accomplish the same thing. In addition, maybe you add some audio narration to cover the highlight of each section or some video where needed.

Rather than trying to build the “$1 Million course”, this approach immediately let’s you exploit your existing content, get some benefits of moving on-line and make improvements as your budget permits. In other words, start where you are today and make things better over time.

It’s the same with developing learning content. It’s about making the hard things easy to do. What are the hard things in developing learning content? Content changes, customization and reusing content. Most instructional designers can describe in detail how they initially create content, how the tools they use are easy and how they have their own standards for new content development. Ask them to go change the words “sales person” to “marketing professional” in all of the materials for an instructor-led course (instructor guide, student guide, handouts, PowerPoint slides, etc.) and you get that ‘pained expression” as they think about going into multiple files and making edits one file at a time.

How about an on-line course where the same content is shared by multiple locations, such as service centers or manufacturing plants? The scenario where 90% is the same but 10% is different. How would you handle this in your tool? Create a course for each location? Copy and paste?

At Xyleme, we have an XML publishing system that makes these hard things easy to do. Since everything is stored as native XML content, we have one source of content and can use “filters” to dynamically publish for each location. With Xyleme, you simply choose “publish for location 1”, “publish for location 2”, etc. and in a couple of minutes you can have all of the materials you need for each service center or manufacturing plant. With Xyleme, you simply choose “substitute marketing professional for sales person” and in a couple of minutes you have new materials for a new customer or partner. You don’t need to update multiple documents, courses, files, etc.

It’s about making the hard things easy.

It’s about Publishing Your Way to Content Success.

What happens every time something has to change? EEEKKKKK!

1. Open the Instructor Guide make the change
2. Open the Student Guide, make the same changes
3. Open the PowerPoint, make the same changes… oh just thought of a better way to say that (repeat steps 1 and 2)
4. Open the Web Course and make the same change
5. Save and deploy
6. Oops, someone noticed a error in the new content….
7. Bang your head against your desk and start all over again….
8. Oh.. almost forgot about the Spanish, French and German versions… need to do the same thing in all those files too!

Ah… now I get why there’s so much interest in Single-Source Learning Content Development. While people understand the problem, they don’t yet understand how they can really create one source of content . Well help is here. That’s why we developed an upcoming webinar, to show you exactly how it can be done. With a combination of conceptual overview, really users case study and walking through an example in detail, you’ll hopefully leave say… Ah Ha, I see how it’s possible.

Please join us to explore this critical import topic, especial during these turbulent times.

Each time I’ve given this talk I get this question, “I can totally see the benefits of this approach, but I have lots of legacy content in Word. How do I get that into XML?”
A question that I have also come across in some blogs and forums (Berman, Bytes).

There are a few approaches:

1. Custom Transformations: If you have been very disciplined with the way you’ve used the outlining and style features of Word, the mapping from Word to XML elements can be tailored to automatically convert your word documents into XML maintaining most, if not all, your structure and style information.
2. Standard Transformation: If you’ve at least used the outlining feature in Word (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) it is possible to detect and re-create the structure and content elements (list, tables, text, images) and automatically convert the documents to XML.
3. Raw Transformation: If you have not used the outline or style features of Word it is still possible to detect and re-create the content elements (list, tables, text, images) automatically. You just need to organize the content into modules, lessons, topics or chapter and topics as you see fit.

In addition you can consider rather than swallowing the whole elephant in one bite, just begin using an XML authoring and publishing approach for all new development or as you revise courses, convert them at that point.