Why Generate an Accounting?
Having defined what an accounting is, we recognize that the undertaking is considerable for an organization which maintains even a small set of knowledge assets. Given the investment that will be put into making the accounting, we should be very clear on the benefits that will be seen on the other side. In this section, we’ll identify large-scale goals that the accounting helps achieve. Subsequently, we’ll personalize those large-scale goals within the context of certain job functions in the next section.
To Facilitate Educational Dialogue
The accounting gives the learning organization better tools for organization and communication.
Students might ask: “Why must I repeat ‘Pasta Foundations’?”
Advisors could say: “Because you could not attain a mastery rating on ‘boil water,’ you could not demonstrate mastery of the other two criteria that define what you have to learn in this module. Let’s debug that. We can see that ‘boil water’ was a learning goal of the ‘Practice Boiling Water 1’ challenge and the ‘Boiling Water Assessment.’ Let’s see what your work on those two instruments looked like.”
Conversely, an oversight organization could ask: “What skills must be mastered to pass ‘Italian Cooking?’” This answer could be calculated programmatically building out the set of most-atomic competencies, or learning goals.
To Manage Production Teams at Scale
Not only does an accounting fulfill the needs of accounting for Learning Goals and their containing objects within an educational context, it also:
- organizes the writing team’s effort
- scaffolds quality-assurance processes
- provides transparent status to role-adjacent stakeholders with little/no marginal work
- generates artifacts required by licensing bodies instantly
- provides a menu of our (always-)current offerings for new customers
That is, it helps authors to create, managers to manage, and teams to collaborate.
Conclusion
We now see what an accounting is and how it helps our curriculum organization in broad strokes. Given the size of investment to create this accounting, it’s worth noting identifying which archtypal stakeholders benefit from its creation. The accounting is not merely some fussy exercise in outlining, it creates connective tissue throughout learning organizations.
By cataloging our stakeholders, we will argue for the value of the accounting and derive the criteria for a good accounting management system.
Next: Stakeholders in Using the Accounting