In a recent survey of professionals who create and deliver training and educational content, both business and public-sector organizations point to several challenges they face in today’s content-driven marketplace: primarily, a lack of resources to maintain content,reduced time to market, and the analytics to measure effectiveness. Budget reductions can add even more headaches. Only a small percentage feel they have access to the tools that can make big differences in their overall effectiveness.
Working with Lasselle Ramsay and DITA Strategies, DCL received responses from more than 200 professionals. After identifying the size of the organization for which they work and audiences they support, we asked them to identify their greatest challenges in developing and delivering learning content (and allowed them to have more than one answer). More than 48 percent reported maintaining content as their biggest challenge. Some 47 percent noted the lack of analytics to measure learning effectiveness as a top challenge, with other top challenges being “reduced budgets” (42.5 percent), “time to market” (38 percent), and “out-of-date information” (34.5 percent).
Lots of Content; Limited Resources
Reviewing the survey results, it quickly became clear that organizational training groups create a wide range of content with limited resources, while facing many technology challenges. Significantly, these groups often lag far behind other content creation teams in an organization when it comes to choosing and using the latest tools, or managing effective workflows.
For example, the survey found that only 25 percent of training groups use XML to create materials. A majority (65 percent) still rely on Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word (58 percent). This means that most training and learning content providers are not leveraging XML to maintain reusable content, and are relying on outdated methods such as copy-and-paste and manual version control.
Significantly, nearly two-thirds of respondents reported that development and maintenance of training content are not controlled centrally, but rather are managed by individual groups or divisions within their organizations. Respondents indicated that disparate entities in their organizations—individual subject matter experts, HR departments, IT groups, marketing departments, and actual training organizations—create and deliver learning content. These silos, and a lack of a coherent maintenance strategy, drive up the costs associated with creating and maintaining content that could be shared among other teams such as technical publications, product support, and even marketing.
Taking a Holistic View
At DCL, we have found that our clients with extensive and complex learning content development and delivery processes can achieve better results when looking at their content in a more comprehensive and holistic fashion. Automating key parts of the content production process can eliminate bottlenecks and reduce time to market, as well as present new opportunities to leverage content from sources learning teams traditionally don’t rely upon.
Despite an increasing market emphasis on mobile delivery, only a small percentage of survey respondents reported delivering learning content via mobile apps (10.7 percent); the majority of respondents deliver in more traditional formats such as printed materials (73.4 percent), slide presentations (64.5 percent), online courses (59.8 percent), and videos (43.8 percent). Content professionals in the training and learning sector can be hampered by lack of knowledge and skills in creating content for multiple formats. Instead, it appears that many continue to recreate content multiple times to fit presentation, print, and various online formats.
Training and learning content also lags far behind other disciplines in content delivery capability. The vast majority of respondents still deliver content only to desktop computers (91.1 percent), with just a small percentage delivering to multiple devices such as phones and tablets. In addition, only a small percentage of organizations (15.4 percent) make significant portions of their learning content available on demand.
Using Automated Approaches
The good news is that while there’s a lot of room for improvement, the technology exists to make that improvement happen for organizations of all sizes. Organizations that have moved to more automated approaches for creating and managing content are opening up new opportunities to improve engagement with learning content consumers. Our clients have found that using XML to structure content and leveraging tools to produce dynamic output and encourage feedback (such as annotations, note-taking, and comments) result in better learning outcomes and more satisfied customers or employees. And when organizations automate quality control and other content maintenance tasks, they report significant reductions in the resources and dollars required to keep content up to date.
While the types of organizations that responded to the survey included an almost even split between small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and large global enterprises, only a little more than a third of organizations (38.4 percent) have implemented a learning management system (LMS), another indication of just how far the industry has to go in leveraging technology and the benefits of automation.
Not surprisingly then, more than half of learning content professionals (58.6 percent) incorporate surveys as a method to measure the effectiveness of their content. Just 25.4 percent use analytics tools, and only 24.3 percent track behavioral changes. Since most learning organizations don’t use an LMS, analytics can be nearly impossible to uncover. For those organizations that have implemented technology solutions for authoring, delivering and managing learning content, analytics are being used to address process improvements, as well as content quality.
The results of the Educational and Training Content Trends survey are available as an infographic, which can be downloaded at www.dclab.com/resources/surveys/dcl-dita-strategies-lasselle-ramsay-training-content. These results show the critical areas that learning organizations must address, and illustrate that while the industry faces many challenges, it also can seize opportunities to significantly improve content development and delivery with better use of XML, modular content, and content management tools.
Mark Gross, CEO and founder of Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), is a recognized authority on XML implementation and document conversion. DCL (www.dclab.com) is a leader in helping organizations grow the value of their content assets investment. With digitization and content management expertise across multiple industries, including publishing, life sciences, government, manufacturing, technology, and professional organizations, DCL uses its advanced technology and U.S.-based project management teams to help solve complex conversion challenges securely, accurately, and on time. Founded in 1981, DCL was named one of EContent’s Top 100 Companies in the Digital Content Industry four times running, 2011-2014.
