In the VSD webinar on individual learning paths in educational offerings, an interesting question arose during the discussion: Is feedback between media producer and consumer possible? Can a provider of learning content align its development with how its customers learn? Does he even know that?
I have been dealing with this question for years. And a little more every day. As part of a publishing team, you sometimes sit in an ivory tower. You produce teaching materials to the best of your knowledge and belief. A network of subject experts and users accompanies the development of teaching materials. However, as a teaching material producer, you rarely have real contact with the end customer – the learner.
Status Quo: Sending
The reality usually looks like this: you produce in the publishing house and distribute these products to the customer. If you’re lucky, a customer might contact you by email or phone – usually in a negative case, when something is missing, disturbing, or not working.
Of course, as a publisher, you try to establish contact with end customers through interviews, school visits, or surveys. In practice, however, this is time-consuming and therefore only done sporadically.
Let’s be honest: it’s also not that easy to incorporate feedback into products. Current teaching material production still often revolves around printed materials. And if you want to optimize printing, high print runs are often necessary. So even if feedback comes in, it takes until the next edition before a change can be implemented at all.
The Future: the Publication Cycle
Current and future technologies can help break through this unsatisfactory situation.
On the one hand, a consistent switch to the Content First approach and the inclusion of modern XML production systems such as Xpublisher for Learning Content can ensure that the dependence on print runs in content development is minimized.
The learning content is no longer in the print data but in a dynamic CMS, where the content can be continuously and sustainably developed. The output channels can be used and utilized much more agilely through increased automation.
The output of content to the customer can thus be more granular and individualized – often also for digital use, where feedback can be collected much more easily and quickly.
Modern systems also help here. Modern tracking and AI systems make it possible to observe the learner. This must, of course, happen transparently, but it also makes sense for the learner – by allowing himself to be observed, he helps to improve content.
The measurement data can be evaluated by the content producer: Which content led to drop-offs? Which practice tasks have a particularly high error rate? How much time was spent on individual content blocks? Where did communication between learners take place? When and on which devices was learning done?
It is important that these measurement data flow into continuous content development in real-time. Here, too, a content-first publication system can help by providing an appropriate dashboard.
There’s Still much to Do
This publication cycle is not yet a reality. At least not in the development of teaching materials. In news publishing, this interaction with customers in content development is already everyday life. In the large newsrooms, customer data is continuously evaluated and production is controlled accordingly.
For marketing specialists, this concept is old hat. With suitable tracking, communication campaigns are already being agilely aligned with the needs and reactions of the target audience.
I am convinced that this principle will also prevail in the production of teaching materials. In conversation with various actors in my network, I am driving this cycle forward. There is still a lack of practical projects to implement this vision. But I am sure that practical use will come soon.
And of course, I am happy to be available if a publisher would like to try it out 🙂
