Publishing your way to Learning Success! - Part 1

Single Source Authoring using XML for Multi-Channel Publishing has been proven in many industries to significantly reduce content development costs, save time and improve quality. What is different and unique about developing learning content is the additional complexity of several learning standards (SCORM for example). In our world, dealing with drag and drop activities, animations and course sequencing are much harder than simply transforming content from print to the web.

To highlight this complex problem, one of the first questions I am frequently asked by prospective clients is, “Can we realistically have reusable learning content and actually create engaging on-line courses?” There seems to be a perception with learning managers that this is not really possible. Perhaps since the technology really didn’t exist in the past to achieve this, this is a reasonable perception. But today it does. With the right solution, you can have highly reusable content which enables a synchronized blended learning program, and incorporate highly interactive content for your online courses.

If we step back for a minute from how we can more cost-effectively, more quickly and more consistently develop web courses, instructor led materials and performance support aides, the real issue is “How can we best address a learner’s “Five Moments of Need” to improve performance?”

Dr. Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher defined these needs as:

When Learning for the First Time
When Wanting to Learn More
When Trying to Remember
When Things Change
When Something Goes Wrong

While an engaging on-line course will help with number one and perhaps number two, the overwhelming majority of a learners needs are not met by taking an on-line course or attending an instructor-led event, but rather by giving a learner access to the exact content the need, in the format they want, at the moment the need.

The only way to do this cost-effectively, quickly and consistently is by moving to a single source development process that combines proven XML authoring and publishing techniques with full support for the latest learning standards. Without this combination, developing new learning products and updating existing content becomes very expensive and difficult to manage. The “ML” in XML is for markup, and without being able to “mark up” the content, it is impossible to designate what parts of the content are best applied to what output. The “X” is for eXtensible. By extending the XML model to include learning specific requirements – sequencing rules, assessments, competencies and support for the latest SCORM standard, we can have reusable content and great learning products.

The next question I am typically asked is, “Will this require a big change for my instructional designers, writers and SMEs?”

More next week…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 4:39 am by Mark and is filed under Reusability 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.