11 Planning Your Open Textbook
When writing a textbook, keep “some possible pedagogical use cases in mind.” As the author, you may have an idea of how you would want the textbook to be used, but other instructors will “define reading assignments (textbooks as a whole or portions of it) in function of their pedagogical objectives. These may not be compatible with your original intent as the author.”[1]
How can you ensure that your textbook is of the greatest utility to other instructors? The way that you select and organize your content will determine how useful the book will be as an instructional tool.
Setting Learning Objectives
Before beginning to write, think about planning your book chapters in terms of desired learning objectives. By the end of the chapter, what should students be able to do? Setting learning objectives will help you determine the level of the material, the content you include, and help design any assessments that might be included at the end of each chapter or section. “Usually in textbooks, objectives are not just used to plan the text, but they are made explicit [to readers]. Objectives can be written out at the start of chapters and/or sections or inserted where appropriate.”[2]
Learning objectives for your textbook can be written using Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The taxonomy has six levels, moving from the least complex type of learning, “Remember,” to the most complex, “Create.” An effective learning objective will use an appropriate action verb to define the level of learning. For example, “By the end of this section, learners will be able to organize their textbook content according to Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives.” By using the verb “organize,” the level of learning is set at the “Analyze” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to write learning objectives for each chapter can help you keep the level of your textbook consistent (for instance, an introductory textbook aimed at first or second year students may never move past the “apply” level) or to help you structure your chapters so that they build on each other, moving from a low level to a high level of learning.
Selecting and Organizing Your Content
Most textbooks follow a specific framework. For example, chapters typically correspond to major topics, and sections within each chapter correspond to “major subtopics, i.e. a independent unit of instruction. Sub-sections usually cover a concept or procedure to be learned.”[3] The size of your textbook, the number of topics, and the way those topics are divided are determined by how you intend the book to be used. So for example, you could think of a textbook chapter as corresponding “to a week’s work, e.g. two classes and a homework assignment.”[4]
Each chapter and section should follow a consistent pattern. One way to think about designing each chapter is with Robert Gagné’s “Nine Events of Instruction,” as described in Gagné and Briggs’ book, Principles of Instructional