Officially a quarter of the way through Digital Content Strategies. After project planning and management, this week focuses on assessing content and determining metrics.

What did you read or watch that surprised, delighted or disappointed you? Why?

The focus of Module 3 (M3) is content assessment and establishing quantitative and qualitative measures based on our content strategy goals. This has been interesting in our group project, where we are auditing a client’s Learning Management System (LMS) and course content and trying to determine as a team what metrics or measurements would be useful/helpful information to our client.

The client’s concerns and business goals have been largely the deciding factor in what to focus on or measure. Therefore, some things we proposed measuring early in the planning phase we eventually decided against since they did not seem to fit within one of the client’s main concerns, needs, or goals.  Now that the team has decided on a rating system, we are starting assess the client’s content with all of this in mind.  

Besides the lecture, one of readings for this week that stuck with me was Technical Communication Metrics: What Should You Track? by Tom Johnson. I particularly found this blog post interesting because measuring the productivity of technical writers/communication really isn’t straightforward. It’s something I have talked with colleagues about, way before now.

I knew that it’s easy to focus on quantity since it’s easy to track or measure (word count, page count, etc.). But one of the most meaningful quotes from Johnson’s blog post suggests, “… what you track, you soon care deeply about.” What this leads to is a prioritization of quantity over quality, which can lead to quality suffering.

Prioritizing quantity over quality can probably look like a lot of things. For example, leaving unnecessary words in a document (so that a word count is met) that causes confusion rather than helps the reader, learner, or user. There are some days I feel like I spend more time taking words out of my writing to make it more effective than actual writing. Ultimately, I think the healthiest method is finding a balance between quantity and quality measurements.

While this blog post doesn’t completely solve the issue of tracking quality, it does suggest how to better capture it. It’s definitely worth a read.

What was most meaningful for your own career goals? Why?

I think this week’s lecture and materials has me thinking more on how I might can measure the work I do (especially quality) as a technical writer, both now and in the future. Not to mention how to apply this in other areas, like grad school, class projects, etc. This project is also getting me more familiar with working in a different LMS and reviewing content with a bit of a different lens than I usually use. All in all, it’s been really good experience.