Everything you wanted to know about the DITA standard

Sestri Levante, Italy -- (SBWire) -- 05/17/2012 --A 90-minute webinar will take place on 23rd May at 11am US Eastern Time, 10am US Central Time, 8am Pacific Time, 4pm BST and 5pm Central European Time. Seats are free but limited and granted on a ‘first come first served’ basis. To request a seat at the webinar, visit: http://gnstx.gr/eEX

DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, Learning & Training specialization is a new structured content XML format for producing online and instructor-led training and documentation materials.

The standard is issued by OASIS, the US-headquartered global consortium for open standards in the Information Society, which aims to boost the convergence of technical and training documentation within engineering and process orientated industries, such as the machine plants, semiconductor, automotive, financial, pharmaceutical, translation and defence industries.

Today’s instructional authors, designing technical training sessions within large engineering, manufacturing and process based industries, need to cope with some 90% of their input materials coming from disparate sources within their organisations. Typically, these include the product and plant engineering, design and marketing departments – all of which use different content packaging and exchange standards (for example, DocBook, ePub, IETM and/or S1000D).

All of these differ from those commonly used within learning/ training tools and platforms – such as SCORM, IMS and AICC content packaging and tracking interchange formats.

This lack of a common interoperability format across the technical documentation, training platforms and tools has limited, to date, the type of documents that training departments could receive as input from their technical counterparts to Word, PDF and HTML, for example.

Yet - to compete successfully in contemporary markets, reaching their workforce where and when they need field training and performance support - there is a need to create compelling training materials able to deal with the increasing complexity and blending of technical training formats, from Instructor-Led Sessions to WBT, Mobile learning and beyond.

The ‘cut and paste’ approach was the most commonly used approach to producing technical documentation for online training delivery. This resulted in high levels of content replication, low levels of content re-use and extremely high costs in engaging subject matter experts (SMEs) within never-ending proof-reading cycles.

All those engaged in designing training for new products and processes around the world have experienced high levels of inefficiency in online training design. So they have been looking for an improved interoperability format to allow them to exchange contents among the diverse and dispersed knowledge hubs within their organisations more easily.

The DITA Learning & Training specialization now addresses this gap and brings new life to content interoperability across and within large organisations dealing with massive and rapid technical documentation and training materials production flows.

In the webinar, Fabrizio Cardinali, an expert in interoperability standards, co-writer of many of the IMS, SCORM and AICC content specifications and CEO of eXact learning solutions North America - a world leading provider of online and mobile learning content management solutions - explains the need for new generation structured content management standards and the benefit of adopting DITA. He also outlines how it compares and can be integrated with other existing learning content formats such as SCORM Content Packaging and IMS Common Cartridge.

During the webinar, Mr Cardinali will combine theory with practical hands-on sessions, using the new DITA content authoring and management plug-in for the eXact LCMS and eXact Mobile platforms to import state-of-the-art DITA documentation and convert it to SCORM and AICC formats for online and mobile learning.

In addition to this free online webinar, eXact learning solutions is running a series of closed DITA seminars for content strategists within large organisations, as well as a series of open workshops at public events and venues throughout Europe and the USA. The next workshop will be held in Utrecht, in The Netherlands, on 7th June, and is connected with the DITA Information Energy 2012 conference.

If you are interested in joining any of these workshops or would like to organise closed webinars within your organisation, send an email to m.leikas@exactls.com

Further details of DITA can be obtained from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/

About eXact learning solutions
eXact learning solutions, formerly Giunti Labs, is a leading online and mobile learning content management and digital repository solutions provider, which offers a wide range of tools and services for content development, content management and content delivery, covering:

- Learning content management and digital repository platforms
- Mobile learning technologies
- Consulting and professional services
- Multi-language bespoke learning content production

The company has over 15 years of experience and more than 100 customers worldwide. Its technological innovations allow enterprises to improve their organisational performance in learning content production and management, and achieve significant reductions in business costs.

For more information, please contact:
Minna Leikas, eXact learning solutions, Marketing Manager
Mobile +39 347 4435167; Office +39 0185 4608; Email m.leikas@exact-learning.com
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR,
Office +44 (0)1727 860405; Email bob.little@boblittlepr.com