Higher Education Publishing

Written by Jocelyn Van Vliet

Recently, a friend of mine who is considering applying for teaching jobs was talking about articulating a philosophy of education. It has been a long time since I sat down to think about this, so it got my mind turning. I started thinking about how my philosophy has changed as a result of my experience in both teaching and educational publishing.

Frankly, my philosophy has gotten much simpler. Quality education really boils down to learning to ask good questions. As educators, we need to ask questions that engage students in the content and encourage them to think about more than a memorized process. We need to avoid asking students 20 questions, and instead ask students fewer, higher-quality questions that challenge them to understand the concept behind the process and dig into the mathematics (or insert your preferred subject here).

This does not relieve educators of the responsibility to teach, nor does it disregard the need for procedures and basic skills. It simply calls us to challenge students to think more deeply and gain a stronger understanding of what they are learning. In addition, it provides a model for students who need to learn to ask their own questions that challenge the content or explore it deeper.

So what is it that makes a good question?

Kendall Hunt Publishing's Higher Education Division has announced the location and dates for the next Student Success in College & Beyond Symposium. The next incarnation of this very popular event will be held in Baltimore, Maryland October 5-7, 2012. You can find more details here: http://www.thrivingincollege.com.

In case you're not familiar with the Student Success symposium, let me explain a bit. Kendall Hunt Publishing holds this symposium twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, at various locations across the country. Our most knowledgeable and well known authors present interactive workshops on important topics for institutional effectiveness for promoting student success and retention at a college or university. Each of these authors is an expert in their field and they have all authored college textbooks and ebooks on the topic of student success.

The symposium addresses the full range of factors that promote college student success, focusing especially on high-impact practices that are well grounded in research on student learning and persistence, and which educate the student as a whole person.

Individuals from across the country and as far away as the Netherlands have attended past symposia. All agree that it was time and money well spent, and that their student success program will be better for their attendance at the symposium.

Click  or above to check out Student Success for yourself!

Much has been made lately about customizing existing textbooks for use by other schools. Kendall Hunt Publishing offers three options for getting the college textbooks and ebooks you need. With our highly trained editors, you can create custom textbooks, using your own, original material. Our publishing professionals support and guide you every step of the way because, just like you, our goal is to turn out the best possible product.

You can also customize one of our existing items, blending your content with ours. The other option is to adopt one of our existing products for use in your classroom. Remember, these don't just have to be printed materials. KH offers a wide variety of content delivery systems and options. eBooks, course packs, other types of digital delivery let you determine what works best for you and your students and meets everyone's needs.

There are so many options and products to explore. Visit the Higher Education area of our website and see all the ways we can work with you to create your best product!

Earlier this week I was reading a couple of articles about trends in higher education publishing when I noticed that a couple of the ads that “randomly” appeared on the browser page were for “publishers” offering to publish your book for a flat fee (both just under $200). I wonder how many authors of higher education textbooks have looked into those companies. I know the here at Kendall Hunt Publishing we have a nationwide cadre of highly trained publishing professionals who walk our authors through every step of the publishing process to attain the best results.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a custom textbook, a traditional higher education textbook, or a specialized higher education course offered as an ebook or through a digital coursepack. Our editors are trained to identify your needs and show you how Kendall Hunt Publishing can meet and exceed them. So don’t fall for the “we’ll publish your book for $200” routine. If you have college course materials you’d like to turn into a book or through a digital learning environment, get in touch with one of our editors today. There’s one in your area, and you can find them here: http://www.kendallhunt.com/findRep.aspx?taxid_p=440.

As we all wait anxiously to see whether the groundhog will see his shadow or not tomorrow, I thought I'd take a minute to brag a bit about the custom college publishing expertise that Kendall Hunt's Higher Education division has to offer.

Do you struggle to find the college ebooks or higher education textbooks that are just right for your class? My guess is that even if you find a book that works, you're still supplementing it with your own material such as articles, research, images, graphs, etc. Why bother with all that? By the time you do all that extra work, you could create your own book with Kendall Hunt.

We've been in the business of custom college publishing for more than 60 years. You can write your own book from start to finish, you can use some of our material and some of your own to build your book, or you can take one of our existing books and customize it to meet your needs. With a wide selection of content delivery systems, from printed material to ebooks, to digital coursepacks and more, you choose what works best for your class and what best meets the needs of your students.

We have experts that serve every state in the country. Some are located near you and some work from our home office in Dubuque. No matter who you work with, you'll benefit from our extensive experience in the industry and our unparalleled service. Look into our custom publishing options today and let us make your job easier!

More than ever college professors recognize the importance of getting first year students off to a good start. Not only does it set them up for success in college, but it vastly improves a school’s retention rate.

For the past couple of years, each spring and fall, higher education publisher Kendall Hunt has offered the Promoting First-Year Student Success in College and Beyond Symposium. The dates for the upcoming seminar at the end of March have just been announced. The Symposium will take place March 30 – April 1 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Atlanta Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia.

Beside the fact that it should be a beautiful time of year to be in Atlanta, this professional development symposium features leading educators in the field of college student success and diversity education. It will address the full range of factors that promote college student success, focusing on high-impact practices that are well grounded in research on student learning and persistence, and which educate the student as a whole person.

You'll also be able to explore Kendall Hunt's custom college publishing, online course materials, and content delivery system options for your customized first-year title.

Visit the Symposium website at http://www.thrivingincollege.com for more information. Register by February 20^th and save $25 per person. Watch for more posts with info on the sessions and authors. Don’t miss this outstanding event!

So, what do you do if you teach a unique higher education course and you can’t find the perfect book to fit your needs? You create your own custom college textbook.

That is what education professors at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa did.  They teach a Human Relations course, which seems basic enough, except they took it one step further for their education students.  They teach their Human Relations course specifically for educators.  Since educators face different human relations situations than persons in other careers, they wrote their book to prepare pre-service teachers for those situations. Congratulations  to Scott Arnett, Susan Burns, and Susie Lubbers on their publication Human Relations for the Educator.

With the opportunities available in custom publishing, you can create a traditional printed textbook, lab manual, digital course pack, college ebook or a combination of any of them.

Discover your Create... Customize ... Adopt solutions at www.kendallhunt.com/highered.

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, I can’t help but think about cold treats. There’s an ice cream store in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa that is called Cold Stone Creamery.  I’m sure you are probably familiar with this business concept.  The customer walks in, looks at a large sample of ice cream flavors (ranging from vanilla to cookie batter, to banana) and numerous mix-ins (such as Oreo, Snickers, brownie, or Cookie Dough). 

Now the customer can do one of three things when they enter: they can order an existing creation directly from the menu; use the menu as a template and add their own mix-ins; or create their own treat from scratch.

This concept dovetails perfectly to my work at Kendall Hunt Publishing.  As a leading higher education textbook publisher, we allow professors to create, adopt, or customize a variety of our college textbooks and ebooks.

Like my father-in-law orders his ice cream treats directly from the menu, so to can a professor adopt a textbook directly from our online college textbooks catalog.  This serves him well.  He gets a tested and proven ice cream treat – similar to a professor getting a classroom tested textbook.

Or you could be like my wife and use the menu at Cold Stone as a guide.  She looks up a certain ice cream flavor and consults a list of recommendations to meet her palate.   Her favorite is the cake batter ice cream with the cookie dough mix-in.  This is very similar to Kendall Hunt’s customization process.  Professors can meet with one of our educational consultants, discuss their higher education course, and discuss their options.  They can adopt an existing book and add their own content to create a digital course pack; they could consult our digital learning center to see some of our existing material to add, or they could create a new digital coursepack and deliver via our content delivery system.  The possibilities are truly endless!

Finally, the customer can walk into this ice cream store and invent their own ice cream creation.  This is how I like to roll.  Throw a little bit of this, little bit of that, and bam, a new creation!  As always, Kendall Hunt Publishing offers the educator to create their own course content to meet the needs of them and their students.  Professors can create their own college ebooks, college textbooks, or digital coursepacks. This is the principle that Kendall Hunt was based on and has followed for over sixty years…

All this talk about ice cream is making me hungry…..Thank heavens that Kendall Hunt Publishing offers online content delivery so I can work on the run….I’m off to the ice cream store!

We spend a great deal of time here on the KH blog talking about our outstanding PreK-12 curricula. But there’s a whole other side to our business that I’d like to share with you:  our custom publishing for higher education. No, not vanity press, but true custom publishing. We’ve been doing this longer and better than anyone else. Ever have a professor in one of your higher education courses who gave you the book list, but then supplemented with all kinds of material and research of his own? Those are the professors who have discovered the value of custom publishing with KH.

We got started in the business back in 1944, when our founder, William C. Brown, bought the rights to 26 workbooks and lab manuals written and used by Midwestern professors. These titles, therefore, had guaranteed sales in those authors’ schools.  Kendall Hunt’s story is unique in today’s publishing industry full of mergers and acquisitions. You can read the rest of our story here.

Today, our Higher Education division offers you the opportunity to custom publish a title for your class with all your own, original material. Or, you can use some of your material, and some of the vast library of material Kendall Hunt has available to custom publish one of our existing titles for your specific school and course. You can use digital content delivery exclusively, or you can combine a traditional textbook with online course materials to create a hybrid product that will work for the digital generation as well as returning students. Check out our custom publishing options and solutions today!

As an educational publishing company, Kendall Hunt must, of course, keep up with the trends and keep our business current. That’s the only way we can keep offering our outstanding high school science textbooks, elementary school textbooks, and higher education products.  

Of course one of the biggest topics of conversation around here is social media. How and when to use it, who uses it, etc. We are on We Are Teachers, a great online teacher community, but what about students? Some people are involved in a discussion about whether the use of classroom technology, such as online math and science curricula, an online elementary curriculum and the like, reflects what students are doing in their lives outside of school. We know that social media tools are considered a distraction at schools, so much so that many schools have blocked access to Facebook, MySpace and other online communities altogether. And with the growth of cyberbullying, it can become a real safety issue besides.

The other side of this coin is the collaborative nature or team/community building potential of these applications. Students working together toward a shared result, and all the educational benefits that come along with that. So is there a happy medium? Has your school found a way? Tell me about it!
 

Kendall Hunt Publishing Company (KH) is an educational publishing company with three divisions: Pre-K-12, higher education and Kendall Hunt Professional.

I work in the Pre-K-12 Division. We produce programs for pre-kindergarten as well as textbooks for elementary school, middle school and high school. We work in various disciplines, but concentrate mainly on mathematics, science, gifted education books and custom publishing. We also develop various ancillary materials to go with our textbooks to create solution-based programs.

For this series of discussions, I'll concentrate specifically on the development of a high school science textbook.

Acquisition and Publishing Plan

The initial step for the education textbook publisher is the acquisition of a new product. This would include discussions between the author or curriculum developer and the publishing acquisition editor to determine whether or not it is feasible to go forward with new product. This would include discussions on the physical specifications of the book (size, number of colors, number of pages, etc.) and number of ancillary components (teacher edition textbook, test generator, website, and so on). At KH, the acquisitions editor would work with a  project manager to determine a budget. We would also work with marketing and sales personnel to develop a publishing plan. The publishing plan may include review stages and/or field testing. The project manager would also create a schedule for the program.

Step 1a: Development of the Manuscript and Art Package

Once a contract is signed for a project, we begin with manuscript development. The project manager works with the author to ensure the manuscript and art package is being prepared properly. We may have the author work within a template in Word or just directly in Word or a similar word processing program. The art package needs to be kept separate from the Word document. One mistake new authors sometimes make is that they try to make their manuscript "pretty." That's our job! We want our authors to concentrate on the writing and we'll concentrate on the publishing.

The high school science textbook is usually submitted by batches of chapters. The chapters are then run through a safety check to be sure the experiments are safe and to add any cautions or warnings that may be needed. They would also develop a materials list for the kit component of the program.

We would also have the manuscript copy-edited. A copy-editor reads the manuscript and checks grammar, spelling and sentence structure. They may also cross reference the student and teacher editions and any other ancillary components to be sure everything makes sense. They will also watch for consistency in the writing style and may be asked to adjust the sentence structures to lower a a certain reading level, if needed. The terms within the content will also play a role in the reading levels. We would have authors review and approve the copy-edits.

At the same time the manuscript is being developed, we work with designers to create the cover and interior designs. I'll discuss that more in my next submission.