Thomas Edison
The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
-Thomas A. Edison
The deadline for getting your curriculum data ready for upload to the AAMC’s Curriculum Inventory (CIR) is fast approaching. If you are planning on participating, you will only be able to submit data between September 1st and November 30. After that, you’ll have to wait until next year!
The AAMC has just announced that they have begun testing of the new service, so we have been putting together test XML extracts to send to them. We’ve also been prodding and cajoling our clients to tell us if they’re going to be participating, and to identify and map the standardized terms that are necessary for XML compliance.
Two things have become clear to me while working on this project in the past few months:
1. Getting ready for the Curriculum Inventory is a lot of work.
The supporting documents for the CIR include 250 pages of heavily technical XML specifications. We’ve read them. They’re boring. And, unfortunately, necessary. Add to this reading all of the curriculum mapping, data entry, curriculum committee cajoling, and technical work necessary for a successful upload and it quickly adds up to a ton of effort.
If you would like to send data to the CIR but haven’t started digging in, the following tip might be helpful:
START WORKING ON THIS PROJECT TODAY!
And, to help you get started, we put together a handy How-To Guide for Salvaging Your CurrMIT Data
The guide covers how to:
- Find a list of all your curriculum elements in CurrMIT
- Extract the list from CurrMIT and clean up the elements
- Import CurrMIT data with one45, using the clean version of the elements
Click here to download the how-to guide.
2. Getting your institution’s data ready for upload to the CIR will make you better at curriculum management.
On top of being a lot of work, there will always be some detractors who do not see any value in the CIR project. So why do it? Well, beyond the obvious benefits of reporting, I believe this project is a significant opportunity for schools to improve their curriculum data and management.
Most of the work this project entails is work necessary for good, solid curriculum management. But, most schools won’t have done that work. At one school we worked with, the curriculum coordinator left a few months after accreditation ended. The school didn’t hire another one for 7 years!
If you commit today to the discipline of preparing your curriculum for the CIR each year, you will save yourself a ton of effort on your next accreditation, and, more importantly, you’ll have better data to help you plan and move your curriculum forward when you need it. If you use this project as a touchpoint to refresh and renew your curriculum each year, the value of the effort will far exceed the benefits of the CIR project itself.