Cleve Gibbon

Ooooh, it’s all a bit different in here isn’t it? This seems to be a place about managing content yet this post is written by someone whose role isn’t about content management. My role is CONTEXT management.

Let’s explain; Cleve has signed up for a Secret Santa blog post and I’m the post he gets. It’s written by a learning and development (L&D) professional who knows a bit about IT and is interested about other functions which make my job easier. That’s why reading up on content management is such a challenge – there is a whole industry in creating and managing content in the L&D field which is a reason the industry won’t change.

To me, Content Management (CM) is a misnomer outside the world of content management. In the world of L&D, context (as I mentioned previously) matters more. It’s interesting to read through the ‘rules’ of how content management do their jobs and it seems to be more of what L&D is calling curation.

Have a look at this post from Ben Betts, one of the leaders in curation within the L&D field. Now compare and contract with our host’s post from July about getting back to basics. There are a few points worthy of consideration.

I like Cleve’s ACT mnemonic. The idea of building for the audience is an interesting one; in context management (XM) the audience are not passive and will have higher expectations from the content being presented to them. A quick glance at the uptake of MOOCs in the world of L&D demonstrates that it’s not so much about the audience; – if they don’t like the content they’ll soon stop interacting.

The content in Cleve’s ACT mnemonic needs to be a bit different when curated. The ‘obvious’ piece of content may not be the piece that people need to have delivered to them. There’s a surge in gamification in L&D – what about making your user work for the content? In learning terms it’ll be more meaningful.

Lastly, Cleve talks about technology and how his CMS wasn’t fit for purpose. In L&D there’s a seismic shift away from Learning Management Systems – LMS – as a way of delivering content. You can’t count everything that counts and a new way of measuring engagement with content is coming for L&D in the form of the Tin Can Api. I’m not convinced by Tin Can yet for reasons too long to detail here but if you work in CM you need to understand about how it might change your role forever.

Anyway, I need to get back…nice to visit and thanks to Cleve for hosting.

Merry Christmas.