Topical Development in Textbook Writing
I talked with someone recently who was developing an online textbook. A competition analysis based on online course syllabi had left him fairly baffled about what the course should cover, so he and his colleague had mapped frequency distributions of all the topics expressed in the course syllabi. They then chose the 12 topics with the highest frequencies of use and built the 12-week course around them. Problems arose in marketing the course, however. I said that the problems probably resulted from difficulty of use in teaching the course, caused mainly by the random ordering of a finite number of topics as discrete units of information and by the lack of pedagogy.
I explained that unlike encyclopedias, textbooks are not arbitrary compilations of topics of equal value. Rather, textbooks teach, and learning is constructed from a scope and sequence of interrelated topics nested in an expository structure. The author pointed out that the course was intended for upper-level undergraduates (majors) and grad students. I said that regardless of level, there needed to be a core narrative with learning objectives, a system of headings, and pedagogical devices to engage and guide or aid students in the course. Pedagogical devices include, for example, unit opening and closing elements, figures and tables, glosses for terminology, question sets, and features such as real-world examples, research briefs, news items, or case studies.
The author said that instructors in his field have no background or training in how to teach, and I said, "Aha, the truth is out!" The sad and sorry truth! There's the rub, and why is that? Why (and how) is it that people can get PhDs and teaching appointments in their fields with no training in or even exposure to learning theory, instructional methods, and general pedagogy?
I know this issue has been addressed in the rapid spread of campus-based faculty development centers during the past decade, also in the growing popularization of the idea in intellectual circles that college teaching can be a form of scholarship. The word obviously has not spread far enough, though, and the new era of online exposition surely requires the same kind of background and training. In any case, I am now helping to revise that online textbook (and am glad of it).
Labels: pedagogy, teaching, textbook headings, textbook writing, topical development, writing a textbook
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
Advice on Textbook Writing
Well, here's a new series of posts with tips and advice on textbook writing. Some of the topics, such as the following, are ones I forgot to mention in my books, Writing and Developing Your College Textbook and Writing and Developing College Textbook Supplements. Other topics simply will address my pet peeves, such as poor writing habits and, more importantly, the poor habits of mind that compromise textbook organization and content.
In my years of work with textbook manuscripts, I have noticed a pervasive voice-audience pattern that I think reduces the value and effectiveness of textbooks overall. To wit: Authors write as if they alone are teaching the course. Authors also often write as if students have no other information source or recourse for discovering or mastering course content.
That the textbook author tends to assume a godlike role and status should come as no surprise. After all, writing is an act of creation, traditionally performed in private and without interference for some imaginary audience that is both passive and captive. This kind of discourse replicates the lecture model of traditional classroom instruction. Add to this the well-known academic ego and it is easy to see how the authorial voice may become authoritative to a fault. The problem is that authors do not see themselves as adjuncts to flesh-and-blood teachers or their textbooks as instruments in another scholar-educator's work.
As a result, the instructor who adopted the textbook for use in his or her class may be ill considered or cut out of the process. The textbook says every possible thing that can be said about each topic, space permitting, leaving nothing to the imagination and little for the instructor to add! Even the instructor's manual that comes with the textbook has little of interest for the flesh-and-blood teacher to do other than assign the readings and show the videos the publisher provides as part of the package.
The instructors who adopt your textbook are an important part of your audience, not just the student readers. So, if you were collaborating with them to teach a course, one off-site (you, the author) and others on-site (the flesh-and-blood classroom instructors), how might your textbook writing and supplements change? This is interesting to think about. What could you do to help your colleagues in the trenches take the primary role in student course outcomes, teach well, and look good?
The same logic applies to the other part of the audience, the students. How can you help them take the primary or active role in their learning, learn well, and look good? In the 80+ textbooks I have reviewed, I came across only two that systematically asked students questions, required students to frame questions, or modeled any kind of inquiry process. But learning is as much an act of creation as teaching or writing. And students must rely neither on you nor on your classroom counterpart as "the" knowledge-giver.
Sharing power over the reader's mind does not come easily to academic authors, but there is so much information today that your textbook cannot stand apart as some kind of bible for the course for which you wrote it. In the last 10 years filling textbook chapter closers with URLs has become obligatory, but often Internet links are strewn gratuitously, with no clear direction for using outside information in constructing knowledge or skills. Consider, too, the rapid growth of collaborative online teaching, e-learning, and custom or wiki textbooks. Where and how will your textbook--as one source of knowledge and as one voice--take its place in this new world?
Labels: audience, authorial voice, textbook writing, writing and developing your college textbook
