So what actually is learning content?

Today I sat down, just as I did ten years ago, to write a set of checklists and standards for digital learning content as applied to the workplace. While this was, for me at least, a worthwhile and rewarding experience, and will hopefully be of value when released sometime soon to content developers and purchasers of off-the-shelf content, the process was enormously complicated by the changes that have taken place in the scope and application of digital learning content.

Ten years ago, all we had, at least as far as workplace e-learning was concerned, was interactive tutorials, very closely resembling the computer-based training materials that we had previously experienced on CD-ROM and videodisc. But with the enormous advances in bandwidth, computer literacy, the use of social media, mobile devices and much more, what counts as learning content is so much more varied:

  • What learning strategy is the content designed to support? Simple exposition? Instruction? Guided discovery? Exploration?
  • Is the content really designed for learning at all? Is it actually just-in-time reference material?
  • Is the content interactive or passive (as with podcasts, videos, manuals)?
  • Does the content stand alone or is it designed to accompany other activities or resources?
  • Is this formal content with high production values, or is it just ‘good enough’ and rapidly-produced?
  • Is this content produced by experts and professionals on a top-down basis to meet specific learning objectives, or is it user-generated. designed by employees themselves to meet the ever-changing needs of their peers?
  • Is the content designed for use on a desktop computer or laptop, or for a phone or tablet?

It’s clear now that, before you can assess any content for its ‘quality’, you really do need to know what purpose it is designed to fulfil? After all, as the Japanese taught us, quality is best defined as ‘fitness for purpose’.

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