A common set of ‘blind spots’ exist within the realm of best practice for the management of learning and development content within Training Departments. I came across an interesting example of this recently whilst searching through a Training Department’s shared drive for the ‘final final’ version of an onboarding module. After searching for 40 minutes I found the March update of the onboarding module but it had been uploaded under a different name to the previously updated version of the onboarding module. Subsequent updates to the onboarding module (in the weeks after March’s update) had been uploaded under the name ‘v2_REAL’ as opposed to the current version of the onboarding module.
This stuck with me for a few reasons. First off, while it appears that this training coordinator had a storage problem, in reality, there is a much deeper scaling problem here. It is not that this team does not have enough storage, it is that their processes have not scaled as the company grows.
The real bottleneck isn’t content volume
Most problems are one layer down. Your current content management problems will not be solved by more tools. The authoring tool, the LMS, and all the other L&D tools are just need to sit on top of a solid structure to be of any value. A new template here and there will not solve a problem that is rooted deep within your content management practices.
Reworking content because of new compliance requirements for a new area of the business does not have to mean rewriting all four modules of training. Updating content because a product has changed does not have to mean completely re-auditing e-learning from line to line.
Once a team has figured out the topics to be covered in a piece of training (ie: a course, program, etc.), they can shift their perspective from seeing their content as a set of documents, to seeing it as content in general. When viewed in a content-centric fashion, a well-organized set of topics can be transformed into a number of different pieces of training.
What does “content-centric” even mean in practice?
There is a difference between document-centric content and content-centric. Well-developed content is more like water than an ice sculpture. It is the same substance that can take any number of forms depending on the container into which it is poured. In other words, well-developed content can take the form of a printed document, or of content delivered in a number of digital formats including PDFs, HTML5-based modules, help articles and printed facilitator guides. However, just because content takes a number of different forms does not mean that it has been reformatted for each of those. Instead it has been developed as a topic and then delivered through whatever is the most appropriate format. This is how content is developed for use by an audience that moves about and works in a number of different locations.
As such the content also needs to be able to be distributed through various channels, i.e. be able to be delivered to various audiences located in various places. The author of the content does not know where the content will be used, nor does the author know who will be using the content. As such the author of the content cannot pre-determine the form in which the content will be delivered to the audience.
- New hires going through onboarding on a laptop
- Field technicians pulling up reference guides on a phone mid-task
- Managers reviewing compliance summaries in a printed packet at an off-site
- Experienced employees revisiting specific procedures in a searchable knowledge base
The best tools for structured authoring of content handle the kind of having One content source (of truth) sent to Four delivery contexts. The problem that I see with most organizations right now is that they do not have such a system in place. Instead, they create and store 4 pieces of content (such as a PowerPoint, Flash file, PDF, and printed guide) for a training course and hope that they can keep all of the content up to date.
Reuse, variables, and conditions (the boring stuff that actually scales)
Content reuse does not have to be exciting reuse discussion over dinner. For those who deliver training to large numbers of people – say 200 odd, it can be a massive issue. Recently I assisted with a rebrand of a large amount of learning content for a client. In total 37 modules of learning content were rebranded for the new company name. All bar 3 were updated successfully.
Three key mechanics to look for in a good content solution for Learning and Development are:
- Snippet or topic reuse: write a standard warning, procedure, or definition once, then insert it wherever it’s needed. Update it once, it updates everywhere.
- Variables: placeholders for things like product names, version numbers, or department titles. Change the variable, change it everywhere, instantly.
- Conditional content: flag certain content to appear only for specific audiences or output types. The same source file can produce a beginner version and an advanced version without duplicating the whole document.
Reusing content does not have to be complicated. Using variables and conditions within your learning and development content solutions allow you to tailor your content to better meet the needs of your audience. Supporting the reuse of content is typically a characteristic of good learning and development content solutions (ANCHORLINK[learning and development content solutions](https://www.madcapsoftware.com/solutions/learning-and-development/)), however supporting the reuse of content is not enough in itself.
How does content management compare for Learning and support for Learning and Development content?
| Approach | Best for | Scaling challenge |
| Word/PowerPoint + shared drive | Small teams, low volume | Version chaos, no reuse |
| Rapid e-learning tools (Storyline, Rise) | Interactive course builds | Content locked in proprietary formats |
| Component content management system (CCMS) | Large, multi-format output | Higher implementation lift upfront |
| Structured authoring tools with publishing pipelines | Technical and compliance-heavy training | Requires some authoring discipline |
Most teams select one approach and then apply it to running L&D on a large scale. Most approaches have their fans and followers as well as their critics. None of these “ways” are inherently better than the others. The success of a process or set of processes used to manage the content of a team to support learning and development of employees within an organization, is largely the result of the process or set of processes having been selected and put into place by a team early in the growth of content that the team creates and uses to support learning and development of employees. By the time the problems of managing content have become so huge that no longer can be ignored by a team, it generally is too late to put a process into place.
Single-source authoring is unglamorous — and it works anyway
Single-source authoring is the practice of creating content that can be published from a single source of information in various formats. Without single-source authoring, the other content solutions concepts outlined are just abstract theories that are not put into practice.
Even though single-source authoring is a central feature of content management for training, it is not very often discussed in the L&D world. Instead, most people immediately jump to tool selection for the document authoring and then on to pretty tool selection for the different formats for publishing out the content. The root of content management for training is the content authoring and how that content can be reused. A good single-source authoring architecture can make a huge difference for a team of L&D professionals in their efforts to create and maintain a large library of content.
Workflow: The secret that no one wants to share.
Tools alone are not enough to sort out content management issues. A well functioning process around single source authoring, with rules around topic ownership, updating and reviewing, and a clear definition of what done looks like for content are also required. This is not complicated to set up, but it has to be established and worked in practice by team members. I have seen many teams with lots of promise who have set out to address their content management issues by buying tooling to import and manage their content. However, old problems then resurface because the process around the use of the tooling has not been sorted out.
Light governance not fancy tooling. A simple topic ownership model. A review cadence tied to the real product or policy changes under development. A simple publishing checklist that is stored outside of working memory of one team member. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just repeatable.
What good is producing ‘beautiful’ and purposeful learning content if it cannot be found six months later? However, in practice this goal appears not to be considered a high priority for most organizations.
