This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 2:21 pm by Jeff Katzman and is filed under Instructional design for single source. 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.
This blog entry will be the first in a series that explores the concepts and best practices for creating learning content reusability.
Standard instructional design approaches coupled with structured writing practices go a long way toward creating pliable, reusable learning content. Think of these practices as a method to create good “core” content that can simultaneously meet its original instructional/informational objectives, as well as being able to adapt to new instructional/informational contexts.
Design principles and writing practices guide authors in a process that creates content that, for the most part, can stand on its own. However, even when we follow a principled approach, we can never tell where an object we create may be used in the future. One size doesn’t fit all situations. The content we create must work in its original context, but also be adapted to new contexts without compromising its original application. In Reusability 2.0, there are several approaches to achieving this goal. In this blog entry, we will explore a couple of those approaches.
To illustrate the case, let’s take an example from one of our clients who operate multiple retail brands globally. Some procedures such as customer service handling are applicable across brands. For example, if you are tasked with creating a customer service procedure for greeting customers, you may find there is an existing procedure originally authored for another brand that has 90% of what you need and 10% of what you don’t. For the example, let’s say 3 of the 4 steps work, but the introductions, examples and summary don’t. What to do?
Reuse Approach
The most straight-forward approach is to build a new object, and reuse the parts that you can from existing sources and create the additional content needed for your application. In our scenario, we would create a new Procedure, create a new introduction, link the 3 steps from the original and create new examples.
In the approach used above, we created a derivative of the original that shares content with the original task. This approach works and is easy to understand, but now we have two similar objects to manage. In any event, having the links between the objects does reduce some of the maintenance burden.
Metadata and Filtered Publishing Approach
Another approach is to add alternate introductions, steps and examples to the original object, and tag the relevant parts with metadata (this part applies to this brand/country/etc.). This approach relies on the concept of filtered publishing in which information about the user (or use of the material) is used to select parts of the content and filter out others.
In the diagram above, we created alternate content and tagged it with metadata. At publishing time, we selected a publishing profile to define what content to filter out. Because we chose the Brand 1 profile, the publishing system filtered out all the Brand 2 content. The advantage of this approach is we now have only one object to manage, but the authoring process takes a bit more thought and careful application of metadata.
Hybrid Approach
It need not be an either or solution. Some clients use a hybrid approach utilizing both reuse and metadata filtering. For example, the multi-brand retail chain wanted to generate publications and learning products customized to the store. These generated learning products reflect what products are currently offered, the configuration of store, and any local laws or customs. Each set of learning products produced for a particular location have just what is needed for that specific store.
If we followed the metadata approach alone, we would create a master course/document so large that it would become unmanageable. Imagine having to write and tag all the alternate tasks, and alternate content to accommodate for all the global differences in brands, products, equipment, laws and customs.
For the aforementioned client, it was decided that rather than have one global master “publication”, individual “publications” would be assembled for each brand within a country. For example there is a separate publication that serves all the Brand 1 stores in the
To accommodate differences between stores of the same brand in the same country, the metadata specialization approach is used. For example, an operational procedure for cash handling may be different store to store based on the type of register or software version. In the content, alternate steps are inserted and tagged to accommodate the differences.
Rule of Thumb
Both approaches will achieve the same goal of creating a customized version of the task that is adapted to its new context. The question is when to use which approach. The rule of thumb is that if more than 20% of the content is custom, then you might consider creating a new object. If you are simply creating a few alternates, the metadata route may be the best.
Summary
Standard instructional design approaches coupled with structured writing practices go a long way toward creating pliable, reusable content. However, even when we follow a principled approach, we can never tell where an object we create may be used in the future. One size doesn’t fit all situations.
We’ve shown you two approaches to create content and use it in different contexts. Taken separately or in combination these techniques can help you address the complexities of the real-world while allowing you to take advantage of Reusability 2.0 drastically reducing the cost of developing and maintaining training content.
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