This is the stage that tends to keep some colleagues in academia from incorporating activities and courses related to treating technical content as computable data and a valuable asset. For many years, this was the stage that involved a certain degree of tinkering with computer code and a combination of applications involving the command line interface and many angle brackets. In 2025, technical content can still be created through those lower level of abstraction workflows, but we are fortunate to have applications now with friendly user interfaces and all-included processes that lower the barrier for students and instructors in the humanities and liberal arts to contribute to content design, creation, and management. Furthermore, generative AI tools can be helpful at this stage and generate code for structured projects.
Through readings, discussions, and activities, instructors introducing students to the discipline of content and focusing on content creation and management might identify the following learning objectives for students:
- differentiate between content that is presentation-bound and content that is structured for reuse and multichannel delivery, recognizing the limitations of word processors, web builders, and web content management platforms in the context of technical content development
- demonstrate foundational proficiency in markup languages and version control tools, particularly DITA XML, Markdown, and GitHub, to support structured content development and single-sourcing workflows
- evaluate and select appropriate tools and authoring strategies for managing technical content assets, distinguishing between CMS-based and Git-based approaches in relation to project goals and audience needs
- explain the principles and benefits of single-sourcing and content as computable data, including how these approaches contribute to content reuse, personalization, automation, and the reduction of errors in content and AI systems.
Listed resources focus on readings, tutorials, and tools recommended for entry-level technical content creation and management.
This stage introduces two key activities in structured content creation: building a consistent, HTML-based website managed in GitHub and hosted on GitHub Pages, and developing a structured collection of topics using Markdown or DITA XML. Both activities highlight audience awareness, technical accuracy, and content organization as essential skills for effective content creation.
In the structured website project, students follow a content model to ensure consistency across entries, focus on functionality and user experience, and present content tailored to a specific audience. The goal of this activity is not to create the kinds of reusable topics (content chunks) required in structured authoring workflows but rather to gain familiarity with applying a content model to content creation, using a code editor, and assembling a website using GitHub and GitHub Pages.
The collection of topics assignment emphasizes planning, applying content models, and creating entries that balance clarity, depth, and structure, with optional use of DITA maps and Lightweight DITA. Students might convert the HTML pages that they created for the first activity into a collection of topics, create a new collection of topics, or create a collection of topics for a product or product suite following the content model that they created in Stage 2 as part of their content strategy plan.