Moving on to the course material surrounding the assessment phase of content strategy, I found a few new things that surprised me – primarily, again, about the scale of the work that is performed in this field. From lengthy stakeholder interviews to exhaustive content inventories and audits, it is becoming ever clearer to me that there is an enormous investment of time and effort that goes into the content I consume throughout my daily life. A specific example of this scale would be the recommended time scale for the assessment phase.
The text recommends that a proper assessment should take eight to twelve weeks for larger organizations, and four to six weeks for smaller organizations. I can certainly appreciate why organizations may be hesitant to invest into a thorough assessment as this seems like a very hefty expenditure of resources; however, I can also see why this expenditure is required for a proper assessment. The sheer volume of content that my team members and I plan to assess over the next week or two for our client can feel daunting, and I find myself grateful to have a couple of weeks for us to get it done.
What I’ve encountered that I find most meaningful to my career goals in education would likely again be a greater understanding of the scale of this process. Time is limited in any course, particularly when that course is being delivered in half semesters as increasingly many courses are. An instructor would obviously want to give students as realistic an experience of a proper assessment as possible, and yet, must balance that with the constraints of course length and the fact that adult learners often have responsibilities outside of their academic careers.
Another piece of information I noted that I felt was particularly meaningful to my career goals was the assertion that the content team should be included in the assessment as much as possible. It certainly makes sense – including the content team would seem to be a particularly effective method of helping them to internalize the findings of the assessment to be utilized in future content. But in relation to my career goals, I am finding one of the most vital skills in technical communication is the ability to collaboratively work across an organization; the vision of a solitary tech writer hammering out documentation is a myth. Instilling this heavy focus on collaborative work in my future students seems like it will be vital to my future role as an educator preparing them for industry work.
Joseph L Meyers 