Textbook assembler

Ross Woods

Here's an idea on how to prepare textbooks easily for a range of units that all have similar components.

Why write a separate textbook for each unit? Some topics might be the common to a number of the units. For the sake of the example, let's say they are presentation skills, change management, temperaments, leadership, team relationships, and conflict resolution. However each unit has some unique content, and each unit has a different assessment. Just to make it a little more complicated, there are two levels of leadership, an entry level section for team leaders and an advanced one for senior  managers.

Let's say we want to assemble the book for unit A. Go to the column titled "Unit A" at the top. Then simply look down the list for an X and click the corresponding hyperlink in the list in blue on the right. The link gives you the current to Doc files of that section of the book. You can then copy and paste it to make up the current version of the textbook. The Cover/title page would be the layout template for the rest of that textbook.

Besides being easy to assemble your materials, you have the advantages of:

• being able to upgrade one section of the materials only once, and then use it for a range of units
• using it over the internet.
• using it with a language like PHP.

It'd be easy to get lazy by either using the common sections too much, and you might make too much work by ignoring them.

This parallels what I did done in the business websites, where almost all courses link to the same texts for WHS and risk management.

 

Unit A	Unit B	Unit C	Unit D	Item
X				Cover/title page A
	X			Cover/title page B
		X		Cover/title page C
			X	Cover/title page D
X				Presentation skills
X		X		Change management
	X		X	Temperaments
	X			Leadership (Entry)
			X	Leadership (Adv.)
X				Unique content A
	X	X		Unique content B
		X		Unique content C
			X	Unique content D
X				Assessment A
	X			Assessment  B
		X		Assessment  C
			X	Assessment   D