So far you’ve worked both individually and with your team to draft the sections of your {Course #} About This Book document. In this unit we’ll discuss how to finalize your document so that it’s ready to hand off to external reviewers. When you’re done, all of the to-dos in the “About This Book To-Dos” tab of the Deliverables spreadsheet will be checked off, and all of the sections in the {Course #} About This Book will be filled in.

Note that you are finalizing your document rather than finishing it. You’re going to reach a stopping point, which we refer to as “pencils down.” This means that you’re ready for the support team to make a copy of your {Course #} About This Book document to share with external reviewers. You can still make changes to your own copy based on new thinking about your project, or what you learn about curriculum design. We expect that work on your project will be iterative. But you nevertheless have a firm deadline at the end of Unit 6 to hand in a finalized – for now – version.

The Lead Author plays a key role in finalizing the {Course #} About This Book document during Unit 6. The Lead Author is empowered to resolve comments, ensure consistency, and make wording changes. It is the Lead Author’s responsibility to hand in a polished draft that represents the team’s goals and plan for the project ahead.

The rest of this section describes what the team can do, individually and as a group, during the two weeks of Unit 5 to get the {Course #} About This Book document ready for the Lead Author to review and hand in during Unit 6.

Working With Your Team to Finalize the {Course #} About This Book Document

These are actions your team can take to finalize the sections of your {Course #} About This Book document that the entire author team contributes to. You will use team meeting time during Unit 5 to resolve open questions about these sections as a group. If you aren’t able to completely finalize these sections together, the Lead Author will finalize them during Unit 6.

• Curriculum Equity Statement: Review the instructions on drafting an equity statement from Unit 2 and the prompts for Curriculum Equity Statement [Google Doc]. Is your curriculum equity statement clear about the purpose, values, and goals that your team commits to?
• Book Description: Review the instructions on drafting a book description in Unit 3 and the prompts for the Book Description [Google Doc]. What does this textbook do that others do not?
• Course Outcomes: Review the instructions on drafting course outcomes in Unit 3. Do you have 4-6 outcomes that include statewide, institutional, and project-specific outcomes?
• Word List: Review all chapter learning objectives, key terms lists, and outlines, with an eye towards consistency. Update the word list to reflect group decisions on how you will use chapter signposting, discipline-specific terms, and words that show respect for historically marginalized groups or topics that relate to oppression in your chapter topics.
• License Statement: Review the license statement that you drafted in Unit 2. Will future readers of this document know how to attribute your team? Have you correctly attributed any outside sources that you draw from?

Working Individually to Finalize the {Course #} About This Book Document

These are the sections of your {Course #} About This Book document that authors work on individually in this unit, while staying aligned with group decisions:

• Author bios: Review and polish how you will introduce yourself to future readers of your book. Use the guiding questions and template in the {Course #} About This Book document if you are stuck.
• One-sentence argument for each chapter: Review the instructions on drafting a one-sentence argument in Unit 4. Do you describe each chapter’s claim so that external reviewers will understand your approach to the content?
• Chapter Learning Objectives: Review the instructions on drafting learning objectives in Unit 4. Do you have 3-5 learning objectives per chapter that define the skills and knowledge that students will engage with? Does each chapter learning objective contribute to students meeting the course-level outcomes?
• Key Terms: Review the instructions on drafting key terms in Unit 4. Do you list up to 10 key terms per chapter that relate to the essential concepts students will learn?
• Numbered outline: We started working on a numbered outline in Unit 4 but haven’t developed the content for each chapter yet. The next section describes how to do this!

Keep the Numbered Outline Structure

In Unit 4, you started to lay out where each topic in your book will be covered by working on outlining the chapters you will write. The {Course #} About This Book document provides formatting using the structure 1., followed by 1.1, and then 1.1.1, and so on. We’ll ask you to keep this format as you develop your outline in order to meet our Accessibility criteria for success: Chapter uses consistent headings, in order, that break up the content into a predictable cadence. Here’s how it works:

1. The outline level that is a whole number on its own is the chapter topic.

1. The outline level with one decimal place is a chapter section. Each chapter section will be the beginning of a new web page in the webbook version of your finished Pressbook. In other words, each chapter section is one continuous scroll for the reader that has a unique url, making it easy to point students to that exact content. Chapter openers and chapter closers are sections. Aim for 3-4 additional chapter sections per chapter to cover the content of your topic.

1. The outline level with two decimal places is a subsection. Each subsection will start with a header where it appears in the chapter section and end with a Licenses and Attributions subsection. Aim for 3 subsections per chapter section to cover the content of the section.

1. If your outline takes you into sub-subsections and sub-sub-subsections, that’s ok for now, but you’ll revise those out of your manuscript once you start writing.

Licenses and Attributions for Finalizing Your {Course #} About This Book Document

“Finalizing Your {Course #} About This Book Document” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.