Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

14.5. TRAINING AND PUBLICATIONS WILL MERGE

Back when training was conducted in classrooms and publications required printing presses and warehouses, it made sense for corporations to have separate departments for training and publications. It made sense for schools to be separate from libraries. After all, most organizations are structured not by their objectives, but by the types of assets used to accomplish those objectives. Once both functions are performed primarily over the Web, we will need to ask whether the division makes sense.

The logical outcomes of a merger of publications and training are knowledge management systems on the large scale and knowledge objects on the small scale. Knowledge management systems ensure that workers in an enterprise can get the knowledge they need in the form they need it, when they need it, right where they are. Kind of like just-in-time training for the whole enterprise.

Knowledge objects are self-contained modules that deliver that knowledge in whatever forms it is needed. To the person who needs a course, the knowledge object is a course. To the person who needs a detailed reference manual, it is that manual. To the person who needs a simple job-aid, it is a quick-reference card.