The TAA Conference Committee invites proposals for its 2025 Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference, which will be held online June 6-7. Presenting at TAA’s 2025 Conference provides an opportunity to share your knowledge, experiences, and ideas with other textbook authors, academic authors, and industry professionals. The theme is “The Future is Now.” We welcome proposals from first-time and veteran presenters! The deadline for submitting a proposal is October 13, 2024.
Thinking about writing an open access textbook? Learn from this case study
Christopher Iverson, and Dan Ehrenfeld, both Assistant Professors of English and Humanities at Farmingdale State College (SUNY), will share their experience authoring the Open Educational Resource, Processes, which compiled FSC writers’ work, in their 2023 TAA Conference session, “The Creation of an OER to Establish and Maintain a Writers’ Community at a Regional Public College.”
They will share highlights, outline key decisions and processes (such as the selection of a Creative Commons License that best supports their mission to share their work broadly), and discuss ways that composing OERs can build community on and between campuses. Processes will be published by SUNY Geneseo Press, and the experience of creating it opened opportunities for community building remotely.
Have you opened a textbook lately?
Open access textbooks are becoming increasingly popular, with many universities now requiring that their students have access to open textbooks. There are a few different types of open textbooks, including those that are free to use, and those that are available for a fee. Open textbooks can be helpful for students who want to study without having to pay for books, and they can also be useful for teachers who want to create materials that are accessible to all students.
There are, however, some concerns about whether this trend is sustainable. Some believe that open access textbooks are fads that will eventually go away, while others some professors worry that the trend will not pay off for students.
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: January 28, 2022
What are your writing goals? What do you hope to accomplish and how will you get there? Sylvia Plath kept hers simple when she said, “Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we see strategies for keeping up with information, facing changes to the academic publishing industry, sharing or marketing our work, and managing our inner critics.
Whatever your writing goals, work towards those that let you live, love, and say what you need to – in good sentences. Happy writing!
Where will publishing be in 2032?
What will 2032 be like? Does thinking about this cause you anxiety regarding climate change, politics, or social media? Well, set that anxiety aside and let’s read the crystal ball of what academic publishing or just publishing might be like.
Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 15, 2021
What are you questioning today? What are you trying to learn? How are you continuing to improve your understanding of your discipline, your writing process, or current publishing opportunities? Helen Keller once said, “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.” So, what questions are unanswered for you?