Simple Tips To Reduce Course Maintenance!

Ask anyone who works with me and they'll tell you that post-publish course maintenance is not my favorite thing. You've been there right? You just put the spit & polish on your course, packaged and published it to your LMS and then the next day you get a laundry list of updates. Maintenance is an unavoidable aspect of development. It comes with the territory, however there are some things you can do to reduce course maintenance.

• Avoid using actual names in your course, for if that individual changes jobs or leaves the company it will require changes to your course. Instead of saying "Bill Jones, Head of Security", just say "Head of Security". That way if Bill Jones moves on you don't have to change your course.
  
  
• Link out to often changing processes rather than embedding them directly in your course. These procedures and processes are going to change and if you have the procedure specifics in your course you will have to change your course every time these procedures change. If you link to the procedures instead you will not have to update your course when the procedure change.
  
  
• Avoid over-using system screen shots if possible. Systems usually have scheduled releases and change frequently. If you have screen shots of a system in your course and the system changes (Even slightly) you will be required to obtain new screen shots and update your course. Now sometimes you have to put screen shots, but sometimes you can get away with being more generic. For example; Let's say I'm only explaining a Submit button on a certain screen, rather than include a screen shot I will just include a solo Submit button, that way even if the screen gets a face lift my course won't require maintenance.
  
  
• Avoid using dates in your course if possible. If your course points out specific dates things happened then your course will inevitably become stale and require maintenance. Instead of saying "Released in 2010, Release 6 of Acme system contains the following feature enhancements", just keep it generic and say "Acme system feature enhancements include".
  
  
• If your course has audio, do it yourself. I once commissioned a fellow employee (who had a nice deep radio-like voice) to record the narrative for one of my courses. It was all wonderful until I needed to change something, at which point I was now reliant on this individual and working around their schedule. Worse yet is that this person eventually left the company and I was forced to re-record ALL of the narrative. Not Fun!
  
  
• If you have audio narrative in your course, break it up into many short clips. This way if something changes you only have a small audio clip to update, rather than long one's. I had a colleague once who was creating audio narrative for a course and the audio on each page averaged about 2 or more minutes. I was helping with the technical recording aspect and maintenance was tedious to say the least. For even the most minor change (sometimes only one or two words) my peer was forced to re-record the entire 2 minute clip. Keep em' short and reduce maintenance.

I would love to hear any tips you might have to reduce maintenance, so leave a comment and let me hear it.