Just-in-time curriculum: Building a case for a CONTENT CURATION approach.

Just-in-time has been a key competitive advantage for manufacturing for decades. In order to achieve this advantage, a company needs to have all the supply logistics planned out and running smoothly so that when you wanted to produce something (like a car – or a car with specific options), all parts, supplies, staff, equipment, and distribution mechanisms are ready to produce a specific product ‘on-demand’. Imagine the reaction of certain car manufacturers when they heard their competition (like Mini USA) started allowing customers to select options and buy online.

The best way to measure the success of this approach looks to be a combination of LEAN and Six Sigma. This means that both the efficiency and quality are measured. 

Many years ago (2006 when I was doing lots of ‘soft skill’ corporate training for Korean companies) I came across this book which was released in 2003. I was well aware of what LEAN and 6-sigma had achieved in manufacturing, so the title immediately caught my attention and intrigued my curiosity.

It is a bit of a hard read if you are not used to business terminology, but the numerous case studies and side bar explanations make concepts clear.

Now let’s jump ahead to 2016 when I created my series of “Education Myths” blogs and began advocating for a CONTENT CURATION approach to instructional design. In this article I want to focus on two main areas.  First, is the amount of WASTE present is in many of the instructional design processes we utilize (or are forced to use). Second, is to build the case for a just-in-time CONTENT CURATION approach.

The underlying premise of LEAN 6-Sigma is continuous improvements through continuous input from employees, partner businesses and customers/students.

Have you ever considered the entire process you or your institution must go through from the initial ideas of a new course/program – to its ultimately delivery?

Take a few minutes to think about it, the number of people involved, the number of gatekeepers, and roughly the time needed.

After twenty plus years of developing everything from workshops for corporate executives, to university transfer programs (entire first year), to specialty ESL courses, to full vocational diplomas, I have come to realize how much inefficacy there is in our course/program design processes. Allow me to use some of the LEAN 6-sigma terminology to explain. There are basically eight waste centers, and we can use the DOWNTIME acronym to make it more sticky. I will add a number of my own comments and observations from over the years.

What is a curriculum defect?

We can start with the easy list of spelling & grammar and quickly move onto matching text content with the correct images, videos etc.  It does not matter if you are designing for the classroom or online. When we are under a deadline, it is amazing what gets released before it should. Yes, I have made some real doozies over the years. LOL

Quality, speed and lower cost is the mantra of LEAN 6-sigma (and most every business). 

Educators thrive on quality and usually use this as an excuse for not getting things done in an efficient manner. I will keep harping on efficiency as this is where many costs can and should be lowered. NOT on hiring someone less experienced at a cheaper cost. (Which by the way usually increases inefficiency and outweighs the initial wage cost saving)

How much time will you spend on getting a graphic just……right!!! Or how many people need to proof the copy?  

Think for a minute of the number of people involved in getting a piece of new content ready. Even if you are an individual contractor, how many people need to OK the material before there is ‘sign-off’? Or waiting for some additional information from a colleague or SME?  Then there are the many steps in large institutions and dealing with regulating bodies.

 “But wait!” You say. “This is why new materials are prepared far in advance. To allow for these delays.” Been there, done that. Only to find that a company or person that was going to used in a case study was arrested or went bankrupt. Information changes so much faster than our systems allow.

Back in the day, a smart (learning) organization would confer with assembly line workers to fix issues or work on efficiency. Whereas an ivory tower organization would ‘fix’ it from top-down.

As a curriculum or instructional designer, how often do you chat with the teachers using your material? (Or when was the last time you were in a classroom). 

How many ‘top-down only’ processes are part of your organization? How diverse are the decision makers? Do they reflect the diversity of your student population or class?

Waiting four days for printed materials to be delivered or four days for sign-off on digital deliver is still four days. Moving people and materials take time. Inputting code or content into a LMS takes time.

In some respects, ‘W’ (waiting) and ‘T’ (transport) are two sides of the same coin. In todays digital age, Transport can mean waiting for various people to ‘OK’ the next part of the various processes. That waiting might mean them literally having to get to their computer in another building or office, or having to confer with someone F2F in another geographic location.

Old textbooks that are still being used, because someone ordered too many.

Old computers and copiers that are still being used because the district signed off on a long service deal.

Poor quality Wi-Fi because someone thought a new 3rd party provider had the infrastructure to deliver. Subscriptions to outdated or below current industry standards software because of a poor subscription agreement.

These are all examples of common ‘education supply’ situations I have run into, especially in developing countries.

Curate, don’t data dump.

I once asked a group of teacher trainers how they bookmarked sites in their respective browsers. I was amazed how many just have one long list. They said they just use the search function in the bookmarks to find things. The problem is most bookmark search is based on exact key word match – not ideas or concepts like main search.

How many times have you (or someone on your team) have been in a tizzy trying to find a file at the last minute? How is this possible in a digital age?

What are your approval processes like?

In late 2012 I was finishing off a new online training program for call center agents. The day before the launch, one of the directors did not like a certain graphic and wanted it changed. There is no ‘find and replace’ for graphics. This was a key graphic that was used over 100 times throughout the 20 lesson course. Any idea how long it took to physically change all the images?

CONTENT CURATION

What would just-in-time curriculum look like?

Imagine a scenario where you are about to conduct a lesson you have done many times previous. But this time, instead of the same old ‘topical news article’ for students to review – you have at your fingertips – ten different, yet related articles to choose from. What would you do different?

If you had the same scenario with a variety of videos, what would / could you do different? Imagine being able to choose content, writers or videos that better reflects the diversity of your class! 

Imagine a situation where hundreds or thousands of articles and videos and worksheets (organized by topic / key words / people / course) has been curated for you – the teacher / instructor / professor – to use as you see fit.    Imagine the learning capabilities!!!

Imagine the blowback by certain institutions, regulators and teachers.  How can we know all this content? How can we guarantee all students are getting the same content? How can we write content (versus concept) assessments?

However, a CONTENT CURATION approach begins sounds a lot like true ‘ILP’. My masters program had certain ‘core’ reading elements but many more optional and student defined reading.

FINAL THOUGHT: I would love to hear what you or your institution is doing around CONTENT CURATION?