In this episode, Alan Pringle, Bill Swallow, and Christine Cuellar explore how structured learning content supports the learning experience. They also discuss the similarities and differences between structured content for learning content and technical (techcomm) content.
Even if you are significantly reusing your learning content, you’re not just putting the same text everywhere. You can add personalization layers to the content and tailor certain parts of the content that are specific to your audience’s needs. If you were in a copy-and-paste scenario, you’d have to manually update it every single time you want to make a change. That scenario also makes it a lot more difficult to update content as you modify it for specific audiences over time, because you may not find everywhere a piece of information has been used and modified when you need to update it.
— Bill Swallow


Related links:

* Structured authoring and XML (white paper), which is also included in our book, Content Transformation
* Confronting the horror of modernizing content
* The challenges of structured learning content (podcast)
* Self-paced, online DITA training with LearningDITA.com
* Get monthly insights on structured learning content, content operations, and more with our Illuminations newsletter

LinkedIn:

* Alan Pringle
* Bill Swallow
* Christine Cuellar

Transcript:
Introduction with ambient background music
Christine Cuellar: From Scriptorium, this is Content Operations, a show that delivers industry-leading insights for global organizations.
Bill Swallow: In the end, you have a unified experience so that people aren’t relearning how to engage with your content in every context you produce it.
Sarah O’Keefe: Change is perceived as being risky, you have to convince me that making the change is less risky than not making the change.
Alan Pringle: And at some point, you are going to have tools, technology, and process that no longer support your needs, so if you think about that ahead of time, you’re going to be much better off.
End of introduction
Christine Cuellar: Hey, everybody, and welcome to today’s show. I’m Christine Cuellar, and with me today I have Alan Pringle and Bill Swallow. Alan and Bill, thanks for being here.
Alan Pringle: Sure. Hello, everybody.
Bill Swallow: Hey, there.
CC: Today, Alan, Bill, and I are going to be talking about structured content for learning content. Before we get too far in the weeds, let’s kick it off with a intro question.
Alan, what is structured content?
AP: Structured content is a content workflow that lets you define and enforce consistent organization of your information. Let’s give a quick example in the learning space. For example, you could say that all learning overviews contain information about the audience for that content, the duration, prerequisites,