Building content dexterity into your textbook

Recently my mentor, Paul Martinelli, was talking about creating and delivering content for various audiences and in a variety of ways. As part of his lesson, he said, “Content dexterity is key. You need to be able to speak on your subject for 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, or 3 days”. Having taught many 3-hour class sessions in more than 20 years of teaching experience, that time period certainly is comfortable for me, but what about the others?

As textbook authors, we often write the book around the expectation of class sessions. We envision the classroom audience, the common structure of classroom time where our book will be used, and the depth and breadth of coverage of concepts necessary to meet the curriculum standards of the course. We then have a tendency to structure chapters and units around those constraints.

But I question whether that approach is effective in our current educational environment. Below I offer some ways that you might want to consider building content dexterity into your next textbook.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 9, 2020

If you’re like most academic authors I know, you have an abundance of ideas that either keep you up at night or wake you up early in the morning. Ray Bradbury once said, “I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.” These ideas matter. Not all of them will become published manuscripts, but they all matter. They move you forward and it’s important that you get them out through your writing.

There will be periods of time when the ideas flow more readily and others where you may spend more time searching (or researching) for them, but wherever you are in that cycle, let them awaken you to the possibilities of what you have to contribute through your work. Happy writing!

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 2, 2020

This week’s collection of articles from around the web is full of questions. Questions about our writing practice. Questions about the science of academic writing and scholarship. Questions about the future of the publishing industry.

Beginning with “what’s the worst that could happen?” and ending with “what’s on the horizon for publishing and open access?” these articles inspire fresh perspective on our textbook and academic writing processes.

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Why success is not enough

Are you successful? What does success look like? Is it a specific number of published works? Is it a certain amount of annual royalties? Is it the completion of a degree or the achievement of a specific title or position? How do you define success?

Now that you have a clear image of success in your mind, ask yourself, is success the goal? Will those checkmarks of achievement satisfy your pursuit of happiness and meaning or are they merely stepping stones to something more?

Don’t get me wrong, I want to be successful – and you should too – but success is not enough.

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Developing #TrustInPeerReview from author to audience, Part 4: Trust is appreciated by the reader

We have now explored the roles of authors, reviewers, and publishers in the peer review process and how those three sets of actors affect an established culture of trust in peer review – the theme of this year’s Peer Review Week event. In summary, authors establish trust through integrity of research and reporting, reviewers develop that trust through unbiased and constructive feedback, and publishers demonstrate trust through effective and transparent communication of the peer review processes in place.

When in concert with one another, these three aspects lead to an ultimate reader satisfaction and appreciation of the process by which they can trust the results of the peer review process culminating in the manuscript they receive.  In today’s post, we will explore some of the factors of audience appreciation as they relate to trust in peer review.

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