Session 8: Authoring and Editing Logistics (July 11th)

Textbook Success Program May 2023 Cohort
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Hey @may23cohort! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow to chat about authoring and editing logistics. Here are the Week 8 slides and handout . Before tomorrow, remember to check in with week 7 to see if you have worked on the homework.

See you tomorrow!
Becca

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Thanks, @may23cohort, today was a great session. Here are the Key Links:

Session 8 helped emphasize the importance of authoring and editing logistics because a carefully planned transparent workflow can help your teams move through this stage smoothly.

You can guide your collaborators in their writing and editing efforts by means of adapting the following documents to fit the purpose of your OER project.

  1. First, a clearly defined author guide [linked above] will help your authors create content with accessibility, equity, and open pedagogy in mind.
  2. Second, a content tracking sheet will help gather content items in an organized manner.

We also briefly mentioned Author Agreements as documents that could help clarify expectations for members in larger teams or instances when smaller teams work with people whom they haven’t collaborated with before. See your handout [linked above] for more information.

Writing a sample chapter can be especially helpful for projects with more than one contributing author because it does a variety of things for your collaborators:

  1. It conveys the desired tone and style(s) of your writing. Seeing an example of a well-executed idea or chapter can help other authors with their drafts!
  2. It determines the desired sequence of textual and non-textual elements in the chapters. This is a chance for you all to test the chapter structure you worked on last week!
  3. It demonstrates your standards for accessibility and inclusive, culturally relevant materials.

In the second part of our session, we talked about editing, which is important in that it gives your OER structure and appeal and thereby significantly impacts how useful it is for learners. The editing process - be it the more substantial enterprise or more focused on copyediting and proofreading - can benefit from the diverse perspectives in your teams as it puts you in a position to push for the changes that place equity at the core of your work.

Since there is no “one size fits all approach” to editing workflows, you can determine your teams’ approach by considering the following few pieces of advice:

  1. Editing needs time, so plan well for it. Be intentional with your time and energy by avoiding too many phases of passing content back and forth between team members.
  2. Be sure to foreground exactly what type of feedback you are looking for. It’s okay to be directive here and provide a list and/ or style sheet that lays out what exactly should be checked.
  3. For the project manager- be your team’s decision maker and help everybody stay on track. Model positive interactions.

Centrally, we always suggest: don’t let great be the enemy of good. Don’t dwell on making everything perfect on the first go. Remember that OER are living documents with opportunities for improvement in future versions.

Next week, we’ll look at more ways to get feedback and input on your projects — through peer and other kinds of review. Getting a seal of approval or recommendation from an external reviewer can help make your OER stronger and more appealing to adopters, so we’ll see how you can work that into your projects.

Homework:

Please note that both the adaptation of your team’s author guide and the writing of a sample chapter are homework activities you can access from the session handout [linked above], laid out in more detail for you in the handout for session 8. We recommend that you adapt and further develop these documents together with your teams and then share them with everybody as they embark to create or adapt content for your OER.

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