Textbook Authorship

Advice on Textbook Writing - 2: The E-Textbook Model

Try developing your textbook manuscript using an e-textbook model. Think of your chapters as modules, your paragraphs as nested learning objects or "content". No need to draft in html; just construct a core narrative text (telling the story) and system of headings (organizing the story conceptually). Then tag or keymark the text for links to learning objectives, supporting web sites, examples, problems, articles, images, glosses, questions, activities, source citations, bibliography, etc. For each module keep a log of these proposed links and supporting materials and their sources as a sort of media log, similar to the permissions logs you would keep. (I model this process in chapters 9 and 10 in my 2005 book on writing and developing college textbook supplements, but already I see I must update! Readers' advice for revising that book is most welcome.)

I see several reasons for drafting to an e-textbook model, some relating to exposition and some to the realities of textbook publishing today:

1. Writing a core narrative is good discipline for saying what absolutely needs to be said in a minimalist (and infinitely expandable) way. Some might argue that this is a reductio ad absurdam exercise, and in some hands it no doubt would be. However, expressing what is most important--the key fact, the main point, the basic chronology, the critical argument or proof, the one thing to remember, the so what?--is an expository writer's duty to the learner. Your mission as a textbook author should be based on what you feel is most important for readers to come away with.

2. Core narratives let you draft a whole-book first draft, to schedule and to length, without being overwhelmed with details. At the same time, media logs let you choose the best and most efficient supporting material for your content for each use--in the print edition, in an electronic edition, and in each supplement, including what you can give to your colleagues, the classroom instructors, to help them teach the course.

3. Media logs let you plan for proving or enriching your narratives in limitless ways at many levels of discourse. These ways offer students and instructors greater choice in what they will use to learn and teach the course content. And this is the way education is headed today. For better or worse, knowledge is becoming unpegged from the minds of its creators--at once personalized and globalized.

4. A textbook manuscript constructed this way can be easily deconstructed and its parts repurposed for applications in web interfaces and e-learning or interactive online courses, in both open-access and for-sale environments. Educational publishing for all levels is headed this way. Publishers use particularized textbook and ancillary content as mix and match media assets. A manuscript that can be easily published in any form has clear added value, including in textbook publishing contracts where the granting of electronic rights has become mandatory for publishers even to begin to compete.

5. A manuscript written to the e-textbook model is easy to revise, as the core content remains largely the same except for any new research, facts, or interpretations. Finding new assets to support the content in a revision can be just plain fun, a playground for invention and creativity and also a way to incorporate the contributions of coauthors and students or other contributors.

There probably are more reasons, and I would like to hear them. There is a downside too, of course, especially for the traditionalists among us, but I'm rather excited by all the changes.

Labels: e-learning, e-textbooks, learning objects, media assets, textbook manuscripts, textbook writing, writing and developing college textbook supplements

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 10:09 AM