One of the challenges of content creation is reusing old content and making a new course out of it. After all, there are various content that can be used over and over again. While the content may be the same, you should avoid delivering it in the same way. It is best if you try to find a way to update the course and the various elements that will help teach the content to the learners.
When you reuse old content, you are maximizing the potential of that data. Not only that, you are also minimizing the cost of creating new elearning courses.
You do not really have to update the entire content – you just have to make sure that the learners who will access it in the near future can still relate to what is being discussed. For instance, you should probably remove references to issues that are no longer relevant today.
Here are some content creation tips that will help you extend the life of old content.
- Identify the content that you can still use. In most cases, there will be more content that you can reuse than those that you would have to remove. The more you can reuse, the more cost-efficient the new course would be.
- Check the content that you can update. Look through the content that you cannot reuse. See how you can update them to suit the demographics of your new learners. Replace examples, activities and other elements in the course to suit their preferences better. There are surely parts that you can salvage and those that you can simply replace.
- Remove content that is no longer relevant. This is for the content that you cannot reuse even if you tried updating them. As mentioned, you need to make sure that the content is something that the learners can relate to. If there are issues that are no longer current, you may want to remove them.
These three simple tips should help you create a new course out of the old. Obviously, this old content will not be enough to complete the new elearning course. Your content creation efforts should not focus on the old content alone. You still need to inject new content to compliment the old one.
When you are adding new content into the old one, it is important to create them in such a way that they can also be repurposed like the old content you are mixing it with. You can do this by using timeless examples. That way, you do not have to remove it after some time. It can be used several times without the need for updates or improvements.
You should also separate important content and create them in such a way that you can improve them in parts. This way, you do not have to touch the whole course every time you have to make adjustments to the content. You can open the part that needs to be adjusted and deal only with that segment.
As you can see content creation should be a mixture of both old and new content. You need to learn how to place them in the course and make them complement each other.
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