say the wiki would be a great idea for doing this work; so would Google
Docs, which would give you a bit more control over formatting.
I think it will be a necessity for some time to come to format and print off
copies for the committee--or at least give members a choice--and for the
accrediting organization, no matter how digicentric or green you would
prefer to be. I think they will still want hard copies, so I think
formatting and printing is pretty much unavoidable. (As a visiting committee
member, I'm afraid I really want a hard copy on which to make notes and
would appreciate the idea but not the fact of having only a link to take me
to the report. I live and edit on my screen for most things, but I don't
think it would serve for this.)
(Of course, you could do your report up in ePub or, better still, some slick
format that allows some kind of by-hand screen annotation and provide all
your visitors with the doc and a reader or tablet, perhaps as a lovely piece
of swag to keep. I'd like an iPad, please.)
And you could always burn the whole thing to a CD or make up a couple of
flash drives and hope that in 10 years one or the other will still be a
viable medium; I think you would also be well advised save a couple of
copies at different places in the cloud and remember where they are in case
the business model of one or the other becomes unsustainable. The CD would
have worked 10 years back, now that you mention it.
But the wiki/Google Docs concept seems ideal for assembling the many section
reports most accreditors require. You can download the manual and section
questions from many/most/all(?) accrediting bodies to get folks started.
Good luck, and suddenly wondering when I'll see the paperwork from the visit
I'm supposed to be doing next month--Peter Gow
On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Seth Battis <seth@battis.net> wrote:
> Folks --
>
> We're gearing up for our accreditation process, and starting to think about
> how to put together our self-study. A wiki (or Google Docs) leap to mind as
> an obvious way of creating such an extensive collaborative document.
>
> But, we're the cautious sort, and wonder what the unanticipated "gotchas"
> are in using an online tool for generating a document like this. Has anyone
> else done this recently (on either end of the accreditation process) and
> have words of wisdom to share?
>
> We're looking particularly at two questions:
>
> 1. Longevity? What if we need to access these documents... say, ten
> years down the road for another self-study.
> 2. Presentation? Just pass the accreditation committee a link and
> shrug? Download and laboriously reformat (thereby losing some efficiency
> that we might have gained...)?
>
> Thanks for your insights and reflections.
>
> -- S
>
> Seth Battis / http://battis.net / seth@battis.net / @battis / (323)
> 638-7384
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------
> Wizard: person who effects seeming impossibilities; conjurer -- Concise OED
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--
Peter Gow
Director of College Counseling and Special Programs
Beaver Country Day School
791 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
www.bcdschool.org
617-738-2755 (O)
617-738-2747 (F)
petergow3 (Skype)
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