By Jenni Beaver—Three years ago Morningside psychology professor, Kim Christopherson, was invited to help with the revisions of a Pearson Publishing textbook. Now she is working on taking a similar textbook and turning it into the textbook of the future.
Pearson Publishing is no longer satisfied with simply producing ordinary textbooks. They are moving in a direction appropriate for the future of technology and education. Christopherson said that the company is reversing their business model. “Usually authors will write the text in the chapters and then later on they’ll come up with ideas for in class activities or quizzes or things like that,” she said. However, the new model is calling for interactive activities first and text second.
This model is different than what other publishing houses are viewing as the way of the future. Christopherson described the typical electronic model of textbooks as a traditional book, turned into a PDF, and thrown onto the Internet. However, as she pointed out, “many students don’t like to read this way.”
For this project, Christopherson isn’t taking part as an author. This time she is labeled as a content matter expert. She is in charge of helping with the development of the activities. “According to psychological and educational research, actually doing and interacting and testing yourself and seeing things in multiple ways, is actually better for learning and memory rather than just reading it and highlighting and underlining, which is really not found to be effective at all.”
The project is not completed yet, but Pearson is anticipating and hoping for a summer release date, so students can experience their new technology in the fall.
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