Visualization is a powerful tool. Athletes have harnessed this power for decades. In fact, visualization stimulates the same regions of the brain as actually performing the action does. This powerful tool, however, isn’t just for athletes. Writers too, can benefit from it. One way to do this, and express your creative self while doing so, is to create a vision board. A vision board is literally a board of some kind that you display images on to help you concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal (or goals) you have.
How to successfully incorporate text, pictures and audio into your learning materials
Incorporating multimedia resources into learning materials is now standard practice, but according to Laura Frost, Director of the Whitaker Center for STEM Education and chemistry professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, it is important that educators incorporate text, pictures, and audio in ways that will be most useful for learners. Frost is also author of the textbook General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry 2e (Pearson).
Accessibility at the tipping point: Opportunities for authors
In October 2012, The Academic Author ran an article entitled “How to make your e-textbook more accessible to students with disabilities”. Since then, demand for accessible materials has continued to grow. This article will briefly recap the need for accessible materials, describe the progress (and sometimes lack thereof) in addressing that need, and examine the opportunities and challenges this represents for authors.
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: December 11, 2015
This week brings an early Christmas present in the form of so many great articles on academic and textbook writing!…
How to build an academic brand online
If you Google your own name, are you happy with what the search results show about you and your work? If not, you may want to take steps to improve your online presence to better reflect your academic brand, which articulates your unique expertise and affects the way you are perceived both online and in the real world.
In a recent TAA webinar entitled, “Designing Your Online Presence to Communicate Your Academic Brand,” veteran higher ed blogger Lee Skallerup Bessette and academic branding coach Paula Thompson, both of Academic Coaching & Writing discussed ways to create or enhance your online presence to promote yourself and your work.
Featured Member Meggin McIntosh – Deliberate strategies to improve your productivity and sanity
Meggin McIntosh is a Professor and Director Emerita of the Excellence in Teaching Program at University of Nevada, Reno. In 1996 she founded Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., a company dedicated to providing productivity and organizational resources to faculty, individuals, and the private sector. With topics ranging from writing productivity and professional development to children’s and young adult literature, McIntosh is widely published with nearly 50 scholarly articles, two academic books, 29 curriculum publications, 14 instructional guides, textbook and scholarly book chapters, a teaching guide, and more than 1,500 blog and online articles.
Here McIntosh shares deliberate strategies to help improve your productivity and sanity.