Training Industry Magazine - Spring 2024 - 53

STRATEGIES
IMPROVE L&D EFFICIENCY WITH
REUSABLE LEARNING CONTENT
BY REBECCA WYATT AND EMILY CROCKETT
Whether your organizational development
goals are focused on training or
performance support in the flow of
work, we've known for a long time that
learning and performance assets must
be customized for the preferences
of the learner in order to improve
outcomes. Our current system of
learning asset creation allows us
to create core learning assets as
described in these (abbreviated) steps:
* Define overarching business and
learning strategy
* Define curricular objectives and
competency or task-based learning
paths to support learning strategy.
* Create core learning assets aligned to
the learning strategy (e.g., PowerPoint
presentations, supporting job aids and
performance support tools, formative
and summative assessments, etc.).
Everything is fine up to this point,
but take a moment and picture what
learning and development (L&D)
professionals have historically done to
achieve differentiated instruction and
content personalization:
* Assess the needs of specific learners
or the context in which tasks must be
performed.
* Make a copy of the core learning
assets (i.e., a copy of the PowerPoint
presentation to be used in a
webinar).
* Customize the core learning assets
to best meet learners' needs.
What happens with those customized
copies? Often L&D professionals
save them locally - outside of
approved systems - and go back to
them again and again. This creates a
few problems:
* Incorrect information is presented
to learners when instructors keep
working from their locally saved
copies and miss the latest updates.
* Keeping instructional content up-todate
is time-intensive and expensive,
as making even a small change
(like the name of a product) will
take a long time if it has to be
changed in multiple copies of every
learning asset.
Reusable learning content provides
a technical tool that enables L&D
professionals to achieve differentiated
instruction without the inefficiencies
and additional risk associated with
managing copies upon copies of
learning assets.
WHAT IS REUSABLE
LEARNING CONTENT?
Reusable learning content is not a
copy. Here's a simple example: Most
organizations deliver
annual security
training that explains the basics of
phishing and password security and
most of that content could be delivered
effectively with the core learning
assets described above. But often
phishing attempts are customized to
your organization - employees will
receive an email or a text message
made to sound like it's coming from
their manager. The training will be
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much more effective if scenario-based
learning also uses the name and title
of the learner's manager.
REUSABLE
LEARNING
CONTENT IS NOT
JUST A COPY.
To achieve this, we would need to
make (and maintain!) unique copies of
the learning assets for each manager
in your organization. This means
one of two things: Either the cost
outweighs the benefit and we don't
deliver personalized instruction, or
we quickly create an unsustainable
volume of copies.
When the core learning assets are
created, we define which elements
of the learning assets have reuse
opportunities. We also define which
parts of the learning assets would
benefit from personalization. In this
example, we would create personalized
content for scenario-based learning.
The scenarios would exist as discrete,
reusable content items which are then
mapped to the core content.
WHAT CHANGES DO I NEED TO
MAKE TO MY LEARNING CONTENT?
It will take some foundational work to
determine what kind of content you're
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https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/personalization-and-learning-pathways/learner-preferences/ https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/personalization-and-learning-pathways/learner-preferences/ https://trainingindustry.com/articles/content-development/the-power-of-scenario-based-elearning/ https://trainingindustry.com/glossary/cybersecurity-training/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/magazine

Training Industry Magazine - Spring 2024

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