Presentation by Peter Li at XPubs 2008.

reating training materials and classes is always a difficult task for any company.  PTC is no exception.  We needed a way to streamline our development and delivery model to ensure that as many people as possible were getting the training they needed in the format that worked best for their learning style.

By using DITA, we offered ourselves the opportunity to test the single-sourcing abilities in both XML and Arbortext Editor required by the high levels of content reuse among the deliverables.  Also, since XML stores source content in a format-neutral state, the opportunity existed to test the reuse of content across different deliverable types.

A course development process with Arbortext and DITA offers the following:
• All design documents, slides, and course guides are integrated which reduces errors and facilitates updates
• Greatly improved data reuse for courses and across internal organisations
• Rapid development of customised courses based on existing material
• Modularisation facilitates creation of web-based training from instructor-led courses
• Consistent look and feel of all documents, which includes one IP policy and copyright for everyone and all outputs.
• Lower costs and quicker implementation time due to core DITA matching the majority of DTD requirements, as well as the use of Arbortext Editor’s alias and profile features.
• Automatic publication of different PDFs targeted for either internal use or channel partners
• Better for global collaborative development
• Rolling up of attributes across different topics into the main course.
• Changes propagate
• Don’t need to worry about formatting
• Cross-referencing within and between courses