Abstract:

Often, the same content creation processes are repeated, without real benefit, only supporting a different kind of presentation medium (e.g. Slide, Webpage, Textbook, etc.). It is time to industrialize the creation of e Learning content if you want to keep the quality, cost and time to market of your e-Learning content in check. There are two key elements in how you can industrialize your e-Learning content creation without compromise: The first strategy is to focus on modular content. Think of modular content as building blocks, that are still agnostic of the presentation medium they will end up in. By creating these building blocks first, you focus your creative and editorial efforts on creating reusable pieces of content that can easily be assembled into presentation medium specific content and reused, recombined and/or localized. The second one is to structure and streamline the content creation process. A two-step content creation process is where both strategies meet. First you create content blocks. Then you assemble them into “learning content”. But that is NOT todays reality in “learning content” production.

Content has structure. Structure is the way that you put information together. It encompasses the parts and pieces of a base of content and their relationships to each other. Structure, however, is much more important than format (Boiko 2004) because format follows from structure. If you know and control the structure of a body of content, you can create whatever format suits your needs for a particular medium. Format varies with the way that you present a body of content, but its structure remains the same. Some will say content creation is an art, or perhaps a craft. There are plenty of professions that have industrialized their creation process and have won in the cost and time to market department - yet have never sacrificed quality.

The easiest way to determine what modular content looks like in your line of e Learning is to look backwards. Try to visualize the different expressions you produce across channels. The scope of different formats is probably extensive: Slides, Web site, social media, Blogs, supporting materials, information and more.

Most of the organizations come to the idea of content management very simply. They want a tool to help them deal with the onslaught of information that they want to use on the Web and beyond. They are understandably looking for answers, or at least “best practices”, that will enable them to do content management so that they can get on with the real work of their organization. Unfortunately, instead of finding answers, most lecturers find only a long string of questions.

As they follow the string (usually in a series of meetings that get more and more frustrating), they begin to unwind more and more of the organization. The thread leads through every department and is entangled in every obscure editorial and publication process. This can be an awful process as the scope and cost exponentially. So, with e-Learning content is the same string, unwinding more and more of the learning content in the learning landscape.

Keywords:

Learning, Content Creation, Content Management, Content Integration.