So far we’ve emphasized team-level decision making about your project. Once you have an agreed-upon structure and have finalized writing assignments between your team members, authors will do individual chapter planning for the chapters they will each write. The group can then review these elements to make sure that the book as a whole is staying aligned with the equity statement, book description, and course level outcomes.

This section covers the individual work that authors will do for the chapters they will write: one-sentence argument, chapter learning objectives, and key terms. You’ll continue to work in the {Course #} About This Book document.

One-Sentence Argument

Write a one-sentence argument for each chapter in your outline that shows what claims you’re going to make and clarifies your point of view on the material. It will help your reviewers and other outline readers understand your goals for the chapter. If you can clarify this for yourself and external audiences, you’ll be able to write with transparency for your students. Writing a one-sentence argument now also gives you a head start on the chapter overview that you will write later.

A one-sentence argument goes a step further than simply stating the chapter topic. It shares the author’s stance or approach to that topic. A one-sentence argument is a loose thesis statement or guiding claim. Ideally, the one sentence sentence will be quite short. Aim for 30 words or less.

What to do:

1. Make a claim rather than state a fact.

   Do this: People with mental disorders had to fight for laws to protect the fundamentals of their financial security, access to education, equitable health care, transportation, and housing.

   Not this: Laws exist to protect the rights of people with mental disorders.

2. Keep it short.

   Do this: Diversion, or redirection, opportunities may reduce the criminalization of mental disorders.

   Not this: This chapter discusses the problem of criminalization and the reasons that it exists and goes on to consider diversion, or redirection, opportunities for people who have been drawn into the criminal justice system due to mental disorders, and considers how these approaches may reduce the criminalization of mental disorders.

3. Provide enough information for someone outside your team to understand what you mean.

   Do this: This chapter examines training options that may keep crisis interactions safer for people with mental disorders.

   Not this: Crisis interactions and people with mental disorders.

Chapter Learning Objectives

As we discussed in Unit 3, alignment means that all parts of a curriculum work together in support of the whole. While your course-level outcomes are broad, chapter-level learning objectives are measurable and specific. Choosing chapter-level learning objectives in support of your course-level outcomes will guide the development and direction of each chapter. They will help you name what you want students to learn rather than what you want to teach. When a chapter is aligned, all content, activities, embedded interactives, and reflection questions work together in support of 3-5 well-written chapter learning objectives. Chapter learning objectives are a key part of meeting a Learner Focus criteria for success: Chapter-level objectives are listed and aligned with the content of the chapter.

Choosing dynamic chapter-level learning verbs will help you to write more measurable and concrete learning objectives for your chapters and course modules. Avoid more general and vague learning verbs like “learn” and “understand” in favor of more active learning verbs like “discuss,” “analyze,” or “explain.” This can help fellow educators and students track the specific learning at stake in the chapter.

Many people find Bloom’s taxonomy [Website] to be a useful tool for making sure that chapter level objectives are written precisely. Bloom’s taxonomy has come in for critique, but we include it here because it captures a wide range of verbs for describing the work of learning.

Verbs in the higher level categories of Bloom’s taxonomy are particularly powerful for equity-minded student learning. These verbs tend to synthesize a lot of domains at once, inviting students to move beyond memorization to building new knowledge. Including verbs like recognize, list, and define are appropriate for early chapters when students are developing familiarity with concepts. Don’t underestimate what students can achieve when offered the opportunity to synthesize and apply content in new contexts. Aim for learning verbs that ask students to question, interpret, describe, discuss, compare, critique, and develop.

A key phrase for learning objectives: “In order to.” This helps you anchor each objective with a measurable output. Examples:

• Recognize different business information needs in order to choose appropriate research tools.
• Synthesize data and information from a variety of sources in order to draw your own conclusions in real-world business situations.

You can use the ASU Learning Objective Builder [Website] to help you create learning objectives. This interactive tool allows you to select verbs from Bloom’s taxonomy, review example course/module/lesson objectives, and then copy your new learning objectives to your textbook outline. Alternatively, you can use the table below (figure Y1 4.5) for reference.

Key Terms

Key terms represent the 10 most critical concepts that students need to know in order to fulfill the learning objectives for the chapter. By sticking to 10 key terms, you clarify for yourself and your students which concepts are core to the chapter. Key terms are an Accessibility criteria for success: Up to 10 key terms are listed that reinforce chapter concepts, are defined as Glossary Terms, and are aligned with chapter-level objectives.

A clear relationship between learning objectives and key terms strengthens the overall chapter quality. Your chapter will include many important ideas and concepts. At the same time, not all terms need to be key terms. To identify which terms are key terms instead of just important terms, ask yourself if students will miss an essential and deeply integrated part of a chapter’s argument if they don’t fully grasp the term. If the answer is no, it is not a key term.

Outline Draft

Now it’s time to pull all the elements that you’ve worked on into drafting chapter outlines in the {Course #} About This Book document. The document has an outline template that we ask you to continue using. Please copy and paste the template for the chapter you’re about to work on in the right spot in the outline template so that you stay within the numbered list formatting.

• Replace “Chapter Topic” with your chapter topic.
• Replace “One-sentence argument” with your one-sentence argument.
• Leave “Chapter Learning Objectives” as is, but replace “LO1,” “LO2,” “LO3…” with your chapter learning objectives. Add more rows if you need to, and aim for 3-5 learning objectives.
• Leave “Key Terms” as is, but replace “KT1,” “KT2,” “KT3…” with your key terms. Add more rows if you need to, and aim for no more than 10 key terms. You don’t need to write definitions for key terms yet – just name them.

If you have ideas about subtopics to cover in your chapter, you’re welcome to start adding them to your outline now. This is optional! We will cover how to do this in detail in Unit 5.

Unit Self-Check Questions

Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Planning

“Chapter Planning” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.