How to extend the “shelf-life” of your courses

Extending the shelf life of your courses is a balancing act. You need to provide enough information for the course to be relevant. However, you don’t want it to be so specific that it’s out of date in a short period of time. Here are some ways to extend a courses life:

Avoid trendy colors and images.

• Remember those fashions and hairstyles that seemed like such a good idea at the time… but now you just want to burn all the evidence?

Use specifics sparingly.

• Say the product that does x, instead of the name.
• Use the product name sparingly. That way if/when it changes you won’t have to replace the name on every page.

Consider what information is in the audio.

• How often do you want to record or rerecord a course?

Contact Information.

• Use a department email or phone number if you need to include a contact in a course.
• Link to an updated web page that will have the current contact information.

Multiple versions.

• Change takes time so be careful when there are multiple versions available. For example, if some geographical areas adopt changes before the others, make it obvious at the beginning which version they’ve opened.

Be realistic about the contents shelf life.

• Are you discussing gravity, or a computer system? You’d expect the computer system to change long before the concept of gravity.

Build in some hours for course updates from the beginning. Or make a point to plan for them in the future.

What other tips do you have?

- Katie Lund, Project Developer