The Darwin Information Typing Architecture
DITA Training
Information typing, topic-based authoring, maps, specialization, and content reuse strategies. Built per engagement around your content and your toolchain.
Curriculum
Course Modules
Tailored program
Authors, architects, and managers
- Information Typing and Topic Types
- Topic-Based Authoring
- Maps and Bookmaps
- Reuse: conref and keys
- Specialization Overview
- Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit
Curriculum is assembled per engagement around your content, toolchain, and output formats.
New to the specification itself? Start with our reference page on what DITA is and how it works, or our guide to learning DITA, step by step.
Why Teams Get Stuck
Why DITA Is Hard to Learn
A topic is not a chapter
Writers trained on books write topics that are chapters in disguise: procedures inside concepts, context the reader was supposed to get elsewhere. Information typing is a writing discipline, and the markup does not enforce it.
Reuse is designed, not found
Keys and content references pay off only when someone decides what is reused, where it lives, and who owns it. Retrofitting that after the content is merged costs far more than planning it.
The rules live in several places
Topic types, constraints, maps, DITAVAL filters, and the publishing plug-in each shape the output. A wrong result can start in any of them, and finding which takes an understanding of all five.
Fluency comes from your own content
Sample topics teach the syntax. Your team learns to make the decisions on its own manuals, which is why the exercises are built on your converted content.
Beyond the Course
Coaching Alongside Your Program
A course gives your team the model. The hard part comes after, when the model meets your product: the first business rules decisions, the first data modules, the first validation failures nobody can explain. That is where programs stall, and where most training stops.
Coaching keeps an experienced practitioner beside your team through that stretch. It is built around your own content rather than samples, and it is designed to wind down: the goal is a team that runs its program without us.
- Working sessions on your real data modules, business rules, and CSDB
- Reviews of what your team produces, taught through the findings
- A practitioner to call when the program raises something no course covered
- Support that tapers as your team's confidence grows
Approach
How We Deliver
Our training program is hands-on and tailored to your specific standard, because structured content only delivers value when the people producing it understand the system they're working in.
Courses run instructor-led, on site or remote, with participant workbooks and exercises built against your standard, your business rules, and your content.
FAQ
DITA Training Questions
Do we need DITA training if a vendor is converting our content?
Yes. A conversion produces valid DITA; it does not teach anyone to write it. Every edit after go-live is made by your team, and without training those edits drift back toward the old habits: copied content instead of reuse, product differences in the text instead of conditions.
When in a migration should DITA training happen?
After a sample of your own content has been converted and before authors start editing the rest. The exercises can then use your topics, and the habits form on the new model rather than the old one.
Can several teams or divisions train together?
Yes, and when they will share one library it is the better choice. A shared curriculum gets every group making the same decisions on topic rules, keys, conditions, and reuse, instead of each settling them its own way.
Is DITA training different from CCMS or editor training?
Yes. Tool training teaches the editor and the CCMS. DITA training teaches the model they implement: information typing, maps, keys, content references, and conditions. The two work best together, and ours is built around the toolchain you already use.
Get In Touch
Ready to Build Capability?
Tell us where your team is with DITA, and we'll shape the course and the coaching around your program, your business rules, and your schedule.