Creating a Learning Content Strategy
Creating a Learning Content Strategy
Robby Robson (CEO, Eduworks & Chair, IEEE LTSC Committee)
& Ellen Wagner (Director of Learning Technologies, Learnativity Alliance)
This was the fifth and final session of the Learning Object Forum, a track conceived as a catalyst to forming a learning object community of practice. I’ll recount a few highlights – and encourage you to look at the entire presentation when it goes up on the eLearning Guild site.
The Learning Object Forum builds on the Learning Object Symposium a group of us attended in Menlo Park in early September.
Graphics by Sherrin Bennett from the Menlo Park session.
Why do we need a community? To keep the learning in learning objects. Learning has become a business proposition, described by words like competitive advantage and cognitive capacity. Object orientation is a given but today’s object experts are “only one object ahead of the rest of us.” For design to shape what’s ahead, we better get on it now.
Business organizations need a content strategy that shares the goals of their technology strategy. Scalable, access, improved productivity, durability & maintainability, software that doesn’t suck, and LOTS of value. Software isn’t even usable yet, but our history is short – the Internet has been commercial for only seven years. (Robby jokes that I began with the UNIVAC 1.)
If it doesn’t work for the individual, no WIIFM, it’s not going to work.
Great expectations, great disappointments. It’s cheap to transport content. The hype cycle. The net has democratized learning. The Locus of learning control moved…but where? IT? The Marketing Department? Instructional design became more necessary, but less sufficient. (Because we’re building learning environments which involve linkages to information and people. Googol is the most popular eLearning tool today.)So… every organization needs a content strategy that spells out concrete
goals.
- Building new content and reconfiguring old
- Interoperability
- Manage intellectual property
- Customize with local content
Think of content as a commodity: objects.
What do you get for your efforts?
- Easy and quick to modify content
- Manage at the modular level
- Simplify authoring and assembly
- Match content to learner needs
- Separate content, presentation, and delivery
The picture is becoming more clear.
Posted by Jay Cross at November 15, 2002 10:19 AM | TrackBack
