Author: Don Reynolds
As Program Manager for At Your Pace Online’s content division, I designed and led the development of a custom content management system that automated and streamlined course production. The new system reduced production time by nearly 80%, eliminated multiple sources of human error, and enabled near-instant publishing to our learning management system. This acceleration supported nationwide expansion and contributed to more than 15% annual revenue growth.
Challenge
At Your Pace Online was in the middle of an aggressive expansion into new industries and all 50 states. Our small content team was tasked with producing hundreds of courses, some just an hour long and others over 100 hours in length. The legacy workflow made this pace nearly impossible to sustain.
Courses were drafted in MS Word, then copied and pasted into Adobe Captivate, with separate outlines and state-mandated syllabi built manually. The process was slow, error-prone, and highly repetitive. Preparing a single course for release could take weeks, and small changes required a full reversioning cycle, creating unnecessary delays.
Approach
As both product designer and manager, I oversaw a team of three software engineers to create a new content tool that could manage the full lifecycle of course creation while meeting strict regulatory requirements.
The first step was to streamline content creation and collaboration. We migrated the workflow into Google Docs and developed a custom management interface that organized courses into folders and lessons, tracked assignments, managed permissions, and allowed content to move through stages such as ideation, writing, and editing.
Next, we addressed the most time-consuming bottleneck, moving content into the LMS. I designed a system where writers embedded simple pseudo-code tags directly into their documents. We then built a parser that transformed those tagged documents into responsive HTML with a single click, eliminating the manual transfer into Captivate entirely.
We upgraded the LMS so it could publish these HTML files instantly once editorial review was complete. This also meant typos or small fixes could be pushed live within hours rather than requiring a full rebuild.
Finally, we automated compliance documentation. I reviewed the requirements for hundreds of state agencies, created standardized templates, and designed the system to pull relevant course content directly into those templates. This removed an entire layer of repetitive clerical work from the process.
Impact
The new system reduced course preparation time from weeks to just a few hours, significantly accelerated time-to-market, and eliminated many sources of human error. These efficiencies allowed the company to keep pace with its expansion plans and contributed to more than 15% annual revenue growth during a critical scaling period.
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