A Note from the CEO
Jim Everidge
Learning Content Management?
When do you start your learning content strategy?
What are the components of that strategy? What tools do you use?
What is the payback? There are many questions about content
strategies that are just beginning to surface. As Learning Content
Management Systems (LCMS) begin to become part of the eLearning
landscape, getting answers to these questions becomes more important
than ever before. One of our Guest Authors this month quotes
a statistic that, in the Training & Documentation arena, over
60% of the content is reuseable. That doesn't mean that companies
are actually practicing reuse - only that there is tremendous
duplication in the content being used. In that statistic lies an
opportunity - for companies to develop a Strategic Business
Advantage by implementing and managing a content reuse strategy.
Implied in this effort is the implementation of technology to
support that strategy. If done well, this could yield faster sales
channel education programs, shorter 'time to competence' for
knowledge and service workers, and a common language among everyone
in the company that faces the customer. The time to start is
now as it takes years for the strategy, once implemented, to take
hold and yield the fruit of the labor. Create a flexible
architecture so that you can adjust as the technology and process
behind content management as it is refined. Several of the articles
this month will give you added perspective here. Let us know if you
have any questions.
What do we do? rapidLD provides consulting services focused in
the learning industry. Our consulting offerings evolve around four
Customer questions:
1) Where do I start? (Strategy
and Business Plan Development),
2) Who do I
partner with? (Vendor Analysis and Selection),
3)
How do I maximize my investment? (Deployment) and
4) How do I manage the implementation that I have?
(Outsourcing).
If you think that we might collaborate
on one of these topics and want more information, edit your
Interests (at the bottom of the page) and we will send you more
information.
We have seen many customers realize fabulous benefits from
learning technologies. We hope that you have that same success!
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Intersection of Learning and Knowledge
Management |
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 R.J. Ferguson
President, Galbraith Media
Inc.
E-learning and knowledge management have traditionally been
treated separately. Organizations have previously isolated
knowledge management from learning by focusing strictly on the
management of content versus the management of learning. Until
recently, most organizations have viewed content as
information residing in the form of various media such as
paper, digital, video, photographs, audio tapes, databases,
corporate records, etc. As a result, knowledge management has
become synonymous with content management.
The ability
for organizations to manage the flow of information to
employees, sales channels, strategic partners and customers
has become strategically important. Managing the flow of
information involves sharing information, experiences, and
ideas in a form that is structured, accessible and easily
disseminated. The breadth of information an organization
manages is directly related to the amount of knowledge it
accumulates.
The challenge today for most
organizations is to manage the wealth of information
inundating them such that they ensure employees quickly
assimilate new knowledge that directly impacts their business
goals. The need to focus on the management of content and the
sharing of knowledge and best practices are key factors in
ensuring organizations help their employees stay informed and
trained so they can keep up with the rapid pace of change. In
the book e-Business Intelligence: Turning Information into
Knowledge into Profit, co-author and internationally
celebrated ebusiness innovator, Bernard Liautaud, explains why
the key to e-business success is knowing how to transform the
vast reservoir of raw data found in every organization into an
intelligence gold mine.
So what is considered
information and how do we turn it into knowledge? According to
Annette Markham, Ph.D at the University of Illinois,
information is just data and knowledge is making sense of it
(Markham, 2003). This is where e-learning is gaining
popularity. Organizations such as Cisco Systems have adopted
enterprise-wide e-learning solutions integrated with knowledge
management systems to help them. According to Cisco,
e-learning "encompasses a rich set of solutions that can be
used throughout an organization-from corporate communications
and marketing to technical documentation, customer support,
quality control, manufacturing, engineering, public relations,
and analyst relations." (Cisco, 2003)
When we consider
the directions taken by leaders such as Cisco, it is evident
there is a merging of the e- learning and knowledge management
disciplines. By combining knowledge management with
e-learning, companies are now utilizing knowledge assets and
learning experiences to retain employees, increase customer
loyalty and expand market share.
Recommended
Readings
Infosense - Turning information into
Knowledge by Keith Devlin. Publisher: W H Freeman &
Co.; 1st edition (July 15, 1999) ISBN: 0716734842
e-Business Intelilgence: Turning information into
Knowledge into Profit by Bernard Liautaud and Mark
Hammond. Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade; 1st edition (October
12, 2000) ISBN: 0071364781
References
Cisco, (2003). Business Solutions, Retrieved
from the world-wide web
http://business.cisco.com/prod/tree.taf%
3Fpublic_view=true&kbns=1&asset_id=47986.html
Markham, Annette N. (2003). Information versus
Knowledge, Retrieved from the World Wide Web,
http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/Lectures/I
NFOKNOWLEDGE_files/frame.htm
To learn more about
Galbraith Media and their learning content management
capabilities, click here>>
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Content Reuse in a Global Firm - Customer
Connection |
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 Michael Morrison
Principal, Speed2Performance
Interactive
Imagine a Fortune 50, global manufacturing company that is
doing a new product rollout. Now imagine YOU are the CIO
responsible for ALL knowledge products in support of this New
Product. It is your responsibility to create:
* Technical
documentation products (web and print)
* Customer support
products (web and print)
* Training and certification
products (Instructor- led, web-based, job aides)
* In
multiple languages!
How can this volume of work be
completed on time, when the budgets are shrinking, teams are
getting smaller, and the time between product rollouts is
getting shorter?!
A quick analysis of the current
state of knowledge products revealed that about 60% of the
content is almost the same. The same information was being
recreated by separate teams, using different formats with
different technologies and the result was often inconsistent
with conflicting information. Given these conditions, was
there a way to:
* Eliminate redundancy
* Increase
quality
* Increase consistency
* Accelerate production?
Developing Reusable Content
The CIO adopted
a reuseable content strategy where the set of related
knowledge products are designed to share a high percentage of
content. In this way, the 60% of content that is shared across
multiple publications would have the following benefits:
*
The subject matter expert would only be tasked once
* The
content travels through an editorial process once
* The
same content could be reused in multiple publications
The reuseable content strategy was first attempted on
a few closely related knowledge products. In the first pilot
they merged a technical publication, Instructor-led training
materials, and web-based course. They followed the following
process:
* Content Inventory - Inventory of all
information products that supported a product rollout was
conducted. Common types of information across publishing
targets such as procedures, processes, examples,
specifications, glossaries, product descriptions, assessment
items, figures and images were identified. The process
revealed inconsistencies in customer facing information and
allowed for the development of content models with reusable
content elements.
* Content Schema Design - Each
publication was re-designed from the ground-up using XML
Schemas Definitions (XSD) to leverage reusable common XML
content objects.
* Brand Style Guideline - Aspects
of the company's brand such as its logos, icons, buttons,
colors schemes, choice of fonts managed independently in a
style catalog.
* Publication Presentation Design -
eXtensible Style Languages (XSLs) were also designed from the
ground up in a modular reusable fashion. Because a significant
amount of content was to be reused in many different
publication contexts - multiple XSLs were created- one for
each output target.
* Structured Writing Style
Guideline - the writing approach was modified to ensure
that content was could stand-alone or make sense in any
format, sequence, or context for diverse audiences.
*
Content Creation - the common base of content is
created and sent through an editorial process. This involves
tasking a subject matter expert with a knowledge contribution.
* Publication Assembly - he final demonstration
showed the ability to assemble different knowledge products in
multiple formats from the same source of content in a short
period of time. Each publication could reuse common content.
A reuseable content strategy proved to save the
company time, money and increased the quality and consistency
of their knowledge products. They also have realized that as
they add more related knowledge products to the Reuseable
Content Strategy and provide a means to reuse content across
more publications, the benefits grow exponentially. Now, they
have a content base that is highly nimble and have a way to
deliver more knowledge products in a shorter period of time
with greater consistency and quality.
For more
information about Michael Morrison, click here >>
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What's COOL...What's
HOT... |
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 Novizio Europa - A Bridge to World's of Content
XSD. XSL. XSL-FO. What - have we been "X'd" by Jamie
Kennedy? No - only enabled to bring together disparate kinds
of content. Content, when separated from presentation and
behavior, and stored in an XML environment, becomes useable in
multiple documents and for multiple purposes without
modification.
In the Training and Documentation world
there are many different types of content: web-based
courseware, student/instructor guides, course workbooks,
technical manuals, job aids, and help systems. Systems have
evolved to handle these different document types - Document
Management Systems, Web Content Management Systems, and
Learning Content Management Systems. Envision an environment
where you could use the inherent power of these embedded
systems and take advantage of cross platform authoring.
Novizio seems to be fast on that trail.
The Novizio
Europa system has three components - Authoring for Content
Management Professionals, Forms for Business Users tapped as
SME's, and the Run- time/Publishing engine to create output
for various forms of delivery. The intriguing part of the
Novizio model is the ability to integrate the system with any
(or all) of the content management systems noted above. This
allows you to take advantage of the rich functionality
available in these systems yet utilize component-level content
reuse, XLM authoring, and extensive publishing services.
Keep an eye on Novizio - their system could be 'Out of
this World'.
To
learn more about Novizio Europa, click here>>
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Let's Get Personal |
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Did you know you can receive personalized supplements
to the eLearning evolution?
Click on Update
your profile at the bottom of this email and select
Consulting Tools within your 'Areas of Interest'.
Beginning in October, we will be distributing a second email
with Consulting Tools to those people that have selected an
appropriate category. Note that we have now added Business
Process Outsourcing of Learning Technology to our interest
categories!
But Note - you only get the link if you select 'Consulting
Tools' when you 'Update your profile'. So click on Update
your profile now to 'get Personal' with rapidLD!
Also - note that we have added a link at the bottom,
'Forward email' - this allows you to send this
newsletter to up to FIVE friends with one click. Go ahead -
try it!!
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rapidLD eLearning evolution (e2)
Overview |
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If you haven't been to our web site recently, check out
the latest updates, including the new eLearning evolution
(e2) overview.
More
info>>
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