Component Content Management: A Survey of Practice and Implications for Academic Programs

Component content management refers to skills and tools that enable content to be separated from structure, reconfigured, and reused. While such practices are common in industry, few supports exist for academics planning to introduce these concepts to academic programs. This paper describes the development and findings of a survey of technical communication practitioners and managers, to determine the extent to which component content management practices are used by alumni of one university that runs technical communication programs. The findings indicate that while traditional content development tools remain dominant, about half of respondents use component content management techniques. Respondents advise that academic programs need to focus on long-term skills, and prepare students to be adaptable in the workplace.