During the live version of our recent webinar with Customer Education industry expert, Steve Mullins, we received a number of questions that we wanted to share more broadly.
(If you missed the webinar, you can view it on-demand here or check out our recap on the Skilljar blog.)
Question: When you create modular content for customers, what are your recommendations for the reusability of content for others both within and outside your organization?
Steve: Reusability is key. Each piece of content should only have ONE source and all other areas should link to this one source. For example, tutorial videos should be housed in the LMS Learning paths, and then linked to from documentation, knowledgebase articles, and other resources. This allows for training teams to update one source, which would then automatically update everywhere else (without having to update the links).
Question: What do you find is the best way to get customers to engage with self-serve content in preparation for in-person trainings?
Steve: In my experience, I find it’s almost impossible to ask folks to take self-guided prerequisites before in-person training, unless you make the self-guided content a prerequisite for registering for the in-person training. However, I find many companies don’t do this. Instead, I think it’s more important to understand that you will be introducing different topics during the in-person training. Then after the in-person training, students should be directed to self-guided content as a refresher and/for more in-depth content after the in-person training
Question: What are your recommendations for establishing a system to create and maintain modular content in a scalable way?
Steve: The key to designing and maintaining modular content is to make sure the basic outlines for all of the sources of enablement are aligned to each other. In other words, content t is not replicated in multiple places, but instead housed in one place and referenced from the other repositories. For example, key product documentation and reference materials might be housed in the HTML based online help, while the animated whiteboarding animations explaining concepts, along with the product how to’s and tutorial videos are housed in the LMS, then each references the others. That way, the owners of each repository are responsible for maintaining their specific modules while also understanding how they relate to the associated modules in the other areas.
