The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: July 6, 2018

Jane Yolen once said, “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” This week’s collection of articles includes discussions about the hard work of writing and the importance of tracking your time and productivity related to the craft. There are also articles on innovation and creativity in research and writing, a methodology study group, and FlatWorld’s impact in the textbook market.

As a reminder, registration for the TAA Writing Gym closes on Monday, July 9th. We encourage you to join the gym and spend the next six weeks exercising your writing muscles with other TAA members!

The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: July 6, 2018 Read More

Member Spotlight: Susan W. Bontly

TAA member Susan W. Bontly is a PhD student at New Mexico State University and an academic author in the curriculum & instruction, education, information technology, library science, educational, and instructional design disciplines.

Her most recent publication is titled “Impact of Technology on Post-Secondary Classroom Culture: A Critical Literature Review”.

Member Spotlight: Susan W. Bontly Read More

4 Tips for writing a literature review

Literature reviews are common elements in academic writing, found in dissertations or theses, but also in journal articles, book introductions, book chapters, and even course exercises. Despite its prevalence in academia, the process of writing a literature review is often daunting to an academic author.

In her recent TAA webinar, “Demystifying the Literature Review”, Dr. Daveena Tauber, Founder of Scholar Studio shared four tips that can make the process easier.

4 Tips for writing a literature review Read More

The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: June 29, 2018

This week’s collection of articles from around the web contains a variety of topics of interest or concern to authors. If you’re considering tools to support your scholarly writing efforts, there are articles related to Revision Assistant, Google Drive, and the latest in search. Ethics-minded? We have articles on using tweets as data, sharing story ownership, and interpretation of results. Thinking about your publishing options? There’s continued discussion on open access models. Just trying to move forward in your scholarly writing? We also found time-saving tips for writing papers and methods for being a “star PhD student”.

Erica Jong once said, “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” This week we encourage you to finish something. Be brave. Be brilliant. And write without fear of judgement.

The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: June 29, 2018 Read More

How to incorporate accessibility throughout the publishing process

In his recent webinar, “Making Textbooks Accessible to Students With Disabilities”, Robert Martinengo, Publisher Outreach Specialist for the CAMI project at AMAC Accessibility, said that the issue of accessibility is even more important when it comes to digital products.

“The ability to navigate through a digital textbook is a critical component of accessibility,” he said. “Navigation is enabled by consistent and rational use of tags throughout the text.”

In addition to effective navigation, accessible manuscripts should also include these four elements, said Martinengo:

How to incorporate accessibility throughout the publishing process Read More