Expert roundup: Biggest Challenges with Content - Part 1

Myles Runham

We have a great opportunity to reconsider what we mean by content relevance. Not just the relevance of what is in the content, but the whole content experience.

Is it solving a pressing problem - does it have utility? Is it presented and made discoverable at the right moment? Are the right tools being used to reach users in the right context?

There is an opportunity, with intelligent use of data, to move beyond the recommendation of content to genuine personal targeting. Very often, we will need to travel beyond the boundaries of learning tools to get hold of the data to judge that relevance for our audiences.

Connect with Myles on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ross Stevenson

The biggest challenge for me is surfacing the right content at the right time, along with verifying the quality and source of content.

A lot of content libraries are bloated with open-sourced and paid-for content. They’re basically like mini-Googles without the slick search algorithm. The challenge with this is that not only are people overwhelmed by choice, they have no guidance on what is actually good for them.

On social media, we judge the quality of content via social proof with likes, shares and comments. Yet, this is dangerous. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s useful or indeed relevant. We need to focus more on quality than quantity within the learning content space.

And I feel like that’s where the real challenges lay for us.

Right content, right time, at the best quality.

Connect with Ross on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Marcus Robertson

Like many organisations we don’t lack for content, we have access to multiple catalogues of content in various different modalities and lengths – the challenge is to make sense of it both from a learner and an organisational perspective. How do we identify the right piece(s) of learning and organise them in a way to help learners to meet the learning needs?

There are a number of “multipliers” that make this challenge bigger:

1. Firstly, the half-life of skills is reducing which means that the content needs to continue to be refreshed quicker than before so learners can utilise learning to keep their skills relevant.
   
   
2. Secondly, the reskilling agenda means that learners are needing to be connected with learning content that doesn’t relate to their current role but to future roles based on digital, data and cyber skills which they need more support on where and how to start learning.
   
   
3. Thirdly, to meet these needs new suppliers are entering the market with new learning and new modalities ie sandpits. These new suppliers include non-traditional learning providers who provide learning in addition to their main business ie AWS, Google, Nuffield – adding to the complexity of managing and curating content. 

Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn.

Want more?

Keep an eye out for Part 2, where I continue to share what our L&D experts had to say about today's biggest content challenges.