The power of automation, combined with content intelligence, has the potential to deliver individualized content and drive continuous learning and productivity. But is it possible to execute individualized, skills-based learning at scale?
The Challenge of Scalable, Individualized Learning
Truly individualized learning paths are omnichannel and multi-experience. Learning interventions must be designed as a system that works in concert to reinforce and support the learner in many different contexts. This concept has yet to be effectively implemented at scale.
The Role of a Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
Most organizations lack the tools to effectively support this new world. Xyleme LCMS is designed to digitize your content operations so you can deliver content to match the speed, scale, and ambitions of the business. Orchestrating individualized learning at the scale requires a new level of content management. Content must be delivered to and tailored to fit the needs of many different platforms. The content needs to work together to reinforce and drive retention and feel cohesive. It also needs to be kept up-to-date and in sync.
This level of orchestration will require L&D to break down silos between content teams and merge the development of classroom, self-paced, and performance support into a cohesive campaign designed from a single Body of Knowledge (BOK) to work together.
The BOK needs to be format-agnostic and easily manipulated by scripts, so it can be transformed into the required learning experiences. Marketing has been manipulating and transforming content this way for years with the aid of structured authoring and component content management systems, and now L&D needs to do the same.
However, there are notable differences between marketing and L&D, which is why learning teams need a Component Content Management System (CCMS) for Learning which is often shortened to a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) – like Xyleme.
The Power of Intelligent Content
Content—which starts out simply as the words, images, explanations, processes, procedures, labs, assessment questions, discussions, activities, and more—is captured in structured XML so it can be used across all the learning experiences. This includes any format from classroom to self-paced to performance support.
To empower people with the skills they need, as they need them, they must be able to learn on the go—and content needs to be intelligent enough to support them. In 2015 Ann Rockley defined intelligent content as “content that’s structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable.”
This premise successfully fueled the marketing transformation and should do the same for L&D.
Intelligent content is:
modular content blocks
- Created in modular building blocks
- Tagged with metadata, following a well-defined taxonomy
- Created and stored without formatting
- Published to multiple channels and formats
Intelligent content can and should be used to power personalized experiences. It can be reused across teams to do so. In this way, LOBs can:
- Manage priorities and content teams
- Create content tailored to their audiences and needs
- Distribute where and how they need it (leveraging central technology)
content intelligence
