Peter Sandford Executive VP Thinking of content and presentation as separate entities is critical to creating effective e-learning programs that offer positive educational experiences akin to those encountered with favorite teachers — excitement, involvement, and understanding. Good e-learning is a seamless blend of content and presentation. It is instructionally sound and engages users as it guides them through the information in an intuitive manner. If done well, the combination of media elements — text, graphics, audio, video, and animation — add up to an enjoyable experience that allows the content to be effortlessly absorbed. Despite the seamless nature of the final product, there are conceptual, developmental, and technological reasons to consider content separately from presentation style. Conceptually, it’s useful to think of content as the raw material that must be processed into a learning product. We all know that the same content can be taught in an interesting or dull way. A good or bad teacher can affect the way someone feels about a subject for the rest of his or her life. The teacher’s personality and presentation style has as much or more to do with effective learning as the content itself. Strong Visuals and Clear Themes It’s important to grab the audience with strong visuals and clear themes; this is a core concept. Adding a sense of style and visual interest to content heightens impact and increases retention. The use of rich media, high-levels of interactivity, simulations, and the presentation of concepts through visual metaphors and animations are necessary to keep today’s learners motivated. And in most cases, the online bandwidth is now available to support highly engaging learning programs. Content and Technology Partnerships From a development point of view, experts in medical content are not usually experts at e-learning and vice versa. So it makes sense to partner a writing company that can express the content clearly with a technology/design company that can give the content the personality it needs to fully engage learners. The most flexible and fruitful partnerships occur when medical experts develop content and technology-savvy design companies transform that content into an engaging e-learning program. But content cannot simply be written and handed off to a developer. These partnerships must be true collaborations. Both companies must focus on creating a seamless fusion of content and design. Today’s learning content management systems (LCMS) are based on the separation of content from presentation. Text and graphic content “objects” are created and displayed again and again. Design templates enforce screen layout rules, such as text on the left, graphics on the right, and navigation on the top and bottom, while the content and media that fill these templates remain as separate assets, which can be shared by various learning modules. This makes the content more easily reusable, editable, and available for differing needs. Whether separating content from presentation is required by the LCMS or is just a best practice in the authoring environment, it will pay dividends down the road by increasing the utility of the content assets. The larger the amount of information, the more valuable and useful the separation of content from presentation becomes. Rules for the display of content help streamline production and enforce a consistent experience for learners. Thinking of content and presentation as separate entities is critical to creating effective e-learning programs that offer positive educational experiences akin to those encountered with favorite teachers — excitement, involvement, and understanding. NXLevel Inc., Hopewell, N.J., is a technology-based learning company founded and operated by experienced learning and media professionals who have been engaged with interactive media for more than 20 years. For more information, visit nxlevel.com.

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