Making ILT & VILT Content Easy to Reuse, Part 1
It is rare that we consciously think about making our training content easy to repurpose as we are building it.
It is equally rare that we design and develop content for one context and never touch it again. The result is a lot of time wasted on finding and reformatting the content when we want to reuse it.
The keys to making content easy to reuse are within your control.
It’s all about:
How you structure and format your content, and
How you write it.
Following are some tips for structure and formatting.
Key Point: I’m assuming that you are building a facilitator guide first, because that is the logical place to start. Use your facilitator guide as your master document, making it your one-stop resource for everything anyone needs to know about running the training program and the go-to document to draw from when it comes time to reuse the content.
Structuring and Formatting Content to Make it Easy to Reuse
1) Work from an outline that chunks your content by topic and subtopic.
The name of your class/training program/session is your title/main topic.
Break your main topic down into chunks to make it easy for others to follow, and - importantly - easy to find the specific content you need when it’s time to reuse it.
Chunks are the topics and subtopics that fall under your main topic. You will naturally introduce, explain, and break things down as you teach, so go ahead and formally call out the topics and subtopics you’ll be moving through by creating an outline.
Chunking makes it easier to find exactly what you need. And it helps you cognitively.
Course Outline Example
2) Establish a set of styles that you will use consistently throughout your document. You’ll need:
Example of a Style Set
Heading 1 = Topic
Heading 2 = Subtopic
Heading 3 - Use to call out something important within a subtopic, like a Break.
Headline Text - Use to start a block of content within the body of your document
Body Text - Use as the primary font in your document
Attention Text - Use occasionally to call attention to something within the body of your document
Word has styles you can work from to create your own set of styles. The advantages include:
Time savings - because you don’t have to manually format everything.
Consistency - because your styles will hold when you copy & paste and when others open your documents.
Easier to reuse - because you can easily find what you need and there will be less need to re-format.
Using a consistent set of styles will make your document more professional and visually easier to find what you need.
3) Establish a document structure by building a document shell, to include:
A Cover page
A Copywrite/Information page
A Table of Contents
Tip: Create your Topic and Subtopic styles based on Word’s Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles, so that you can use Word’s Insert function to easily insert a Table of Contents that draws from Headings 1 and 2.
A Getting Started section
Provide all of the preparatory information including necessary equipment, technology, materials, and resources.
Tip: After you’ve built out your document, copy & paste the necessary information from your topic pages into the Getting Started placeholder.
A Training at a Glance page
This page serves as an advance organizer for the facilitator and producer. And it helps you quickly find what you need when to reuse.
Tip: Set this page up as a placeholder and, once you’ve built out your facilitator guide, fill this page in with the goals and time requirements you’ve included on your topic pages.
Instructional Topic pages, including:
The Goal/terminal learning objective & the Time required to complete each specific topic.
A brief overview of what will be happening & any required technology, files, and materials for each specific topic.
Subtopic pages, including:
The time required, the learning objectives, & a brief overview of the teaching/learning process for each specific subtopic.
Having a logical, consistent document structure will help you cognitively. You will work faster, and it will be easier to find what you need. Starting your topics and subtopics with the timing, objectives, and material required will help you assess whether it makes sense to repurpose this content to meet your new needs.
4) Micro-chunk your Subtopic content
Create a set of icons and corresponding call to action headlines for your content blocks and use them consistently.
Use separate content blocks to hold content for your facilitator, producer, and participant.
Develop a list of content block types and use them to chunk out content by type; for example: Activity, Say, Do, Ask, Key Points, Poll, Breakout, etc. This will help you more quickly find very specific content.
An easy way to do this is to add a two or three column table to your subtopic pages.
A two-column table can hold an icon in column one, leaving column two for the facilitator headline & instructions.
A three-column table setup is great for:
holding an icon in column one, facilitator instructions in column two, and producer cues in column three, or
holding an icon in column one, participant book content in column two, and facilitator/producer instructions in column three, or
holding an icon in column one, a screenshot, slide or image in column two, instructions in column three.
Example of a Subtopic page in a Facilitator Guide
5) Curate and Insert pictures and graphics correctly.
Save the images you are using as the same file type, like .png or .tiff, etc.
Store a copy of each image in a folder that is saved with your facilitator guide in a course folder so that you can access the original image files when you reuse the content.
As you Insert your pictures, either embed them or “embed and link”, so that your images always appear no matter who looks at your file, and you avoid the blank box with the little x in it.
Anchor the images, so they stay with the text they belong with when the document is edited and text shifts.
AuthorTec Insert Docs & Pics handles this for you. Try it for free!
6) Run the Find It test.
Can a new person pick up your facilitator guide and quickly find a specific topic or subtopic?
Will you be able to come back to this document and find what you need more easily? I hope so!