The higher education landscape is changing and students are speaking up about the quality of educational materials used in their daily studies. The expectations placed on a college textbook used to mesh with what books were: description-dense and filled with unchanging explanations.
Now students expect textbooks to present information in a clear, more engaging manner and in a way that reflects how students actually learn. This change is affecting how book writing is being used to approach academic publishing.
Students Expect Textbooks to Provide Relevant Information
The main reason for these expectations is the level of textbooks and their content. Students often find themselves having to manage multiple classes, part-time jobs, and while trying to focus, they are being distracted by digital technology.
Textbooks that strive to present more complex ideas with easily understood, yet academically sound, writing styles are the most recognized and valued.
Authors of modern textbooks are centering their writing styles on structured explanations, use of relevant and real-life examples, and the inclusion of summaries that drive home the key ideas.
Textbooks that respect and value students’ time and mental effort will turn the textbook into a valued educational tool and not a necessary operational load.
Digital Habits Are Reshaping Academic Writing
Current students are digital natives interacting with technology that is more streamlined and intuitive. Because of this, the expectations of how textbooks are written have changed.
Texts intended for an academic audience are now paying attention to modular chapter construction, concise sections, and logical flows that mirror how students search for things.
Writing styles, even in print formats, are anticipated to be more user friendly to learners because they may need to be non-sequential page movers to solve specific issues or to review important ideas.
Engagement Matters More Than Ever
Students will appreciate the material more if there is engagement incorporated and the students will have even better retention if there is an engaging material.
Texts that create an illusion of having direct verbal communication with the reader, using the students’ names, and referring to them as a group, will be appreciated.
Techniques of modern narrative, relatable and applied case studies, are used to eliminate a barrier and make students feel the importance of the learning.
A good textbook will create curiosity; A textbook will be compliance; A good textbook will create curiosity; a compliance textbook will create curiosity; a curiosity compliance textbook will create compliance.
ALSO READ: What Car Repairs Taught Me About Writing: Patience Lessons from the Jaguar XF
Affordability and Value Influence Expectations
The rising cost of education is pushing students to consider ‘value for money’. Value in textbooks is based on how well written and how useful the contents are for the education process.
This puts pressure on authoring books that are useful across several academic periods and educational situations.
Crafting books that are ‘evergreen’ or useful for extended periods of time and offering multiple contexts or varied uses will help students feel that their monetary investment in the book contributes to their academic growth.
Feedback Loops Between Students and Authors
The increasing feedback loop of students and teachers and the author is another significant trend. Future editions of books are written based on customer reviews, academic writings, and comments in the course of the classrooms.
Books are being written in a more ‘incremental’ manner based on the feedback of learners to pare down the unnecessary, add clear explanations, and synthesize multiple explanations. This evolutionary advancement offers value to all participants in the educational process.
The Future of Academic Book Writing
Education’s value will be seen in how it focuses more on the learner’s individual ability. With more on learner’s individual ability, the focus of education must be on the goal the learner is trying to achieve.
Education will gain value once it is about updating the academic books and increasing student’s expectations in order to offer the materials for attaining academic goals.
Text authors will assist in this process by writing books that address the goals the learner intends to achieve, and in so doing, these books will help in attaining educational goals.