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Rapid Development Model


Supporting Higher Ed Publishers
Higher Ed publishers are in a very dynamic and exciting market. The focus on continued education, emerging disciplines, and ensuring career readiness has spawned new opportunities for innovative products and solutions. The recessionary economy and the emergence of new competitors have challenged publishers core business of textbook sales. Digital learning and assessment drives the conversation and funding at most levels of education. The student audience has changed, and educational institutions aim to change with it. Todays students are mobile, digital, taking content in smaller doses, and using it their way. Both instructors and students today want their textbook options to be more modular, customizable, and flexible with respect to both price and access. While printed textbooks become less critical to educators and consumers, producing them in the traditional manner remains expensive and time consuming. That approach is difficult to sustain. Although publishers are adapting to these new variables, the rate of market and technological change continues to increase. Many publishers are seeking new models that will allow them to produce textbooks more quickly but at a quality-level that will ensure continued market acceptance and adoption. Words & Numbers works with publishers, universities, educational foundations, and government organizations. We have developed digital-first textbooks, lowand high-stakes assessments, complete arrays of online courseware, extensive teacher support materials, and many other projects designed to provide meaningful and memorable learning experiences. To meet the challenges our clients are facing, our team innovates each aspect of the publishing process, from inception to customer use. Through our rapid development model, publishers achieve their content development goals quickly and at less expense than traditional means, while integrating into the process their own quality standards and marketing initiatives.

BENEFITS
Reduce development time Maximize resources Gain efficiency

RESULTS
Four first-edition science books in under 24 months Hundreds of custom courses built Thousands of assessment items deployed

Why a New Approach?


Author dependencies and relationships must evolve. The myriad content destinations and formats make it increasingly difficult to sustain, document, and compensate authors in the traditional manner. Time must be saved. Every aspect of the business changes rapidly, and the rate of change itself is increasing. A publishers good ideas should be executed quickly to seize opportunity. Costs must go down. Price is always going to be a factor.

Whats the Same?


Market Analysis and Research. Identifying market needs and pressures, setting benchmarks against competitors in regard to scope and sequence.

Instructor feedback. Quality and marketability is determined by instructors teaching the course and involved in adoption decisions. Accuracy and precision. Independent evaluations for clarity and currency, quantitative accuracy, and illustration quality. Format and flexibility. The final product is delivered in each publishers desired formats, and can be prepared for multi-platform delivery in process. Quality. As evidenced in adoption decisions, publisher values, and institutional goals, quality instructional materials are critical.

Whats Different?

Parallel development. Teams of content developers can deploy to build clusters of chapters. A typical team may consist of a writer, development editor, art development editor, and review coordinator. Existing main-text authors can lead or share process. Streamlined reviewing. Rather than a large number of reviewers, many of whom provide minimal or ineffective responses, reviewers are carefully vetted and selectively employed. Each reviewer is evaluated for expertise and teaching experience, then interviewed. This quality-over-quantity approach provides more valuable individual reviewers and more participant investment. Compartmentalization. Writers and editors are grouped in the smallest teams possible, in order to both retain focus and limit the impact of a delay or problem. Sequence-agnostic production. The illustration, coding, and other production efforts can proceed in any order. Production does not have to slow or halt while waiting for components. When a chapter, section, or illustration is ready for the next step in the process, it proceeds. Voice, originality, and consistency checks. With parallel development of chapters, it is imperative that voice and style is consistent. Originality checks are conducted at several stages of text and art, to ensure that plagiarism (intended or unintended) does not creep in.

As customers become less and less willing to reward further improvements with premium prices, those suppliers that get better and better at conveniently giving customers exactly what they want when they need it are able to earn attractive margins.

Clayton M. Christianson, Michael Raynor, The Innovators Solution

The Outcome
Words & Numbers has successfully used this model to create several textbooks, including the most recent ones for OpenStax College. College Physics and Introduction to Sociology, two books launched eight months ago, have over 120 adoptions and growing. Three additional books developed under this process have initial adoptions or interest without full publication.

Words & Numbers has also developed: A growing ecosystem of publishers, educational foundations, distributors, adaptive learning systems and many others seeking partnerships and opportunities to rapidly develop and flexibly deploy materials. Over 300 custom and virtual online courses have been created for publishers, schools, and other organizations. Dozens of supplemental and teacher resources have been developed for higher education clients. Video, interactive, and tablet-based learning resources have been developed for publishers, institutions, and private sector companies. Adaptive assessment and feedback items have been created or deployed in propriety client systems.

The Future
With the tested and proven rapid book development model, publishers can spend more time and dollars on what students need today clear choices and pathways to a more affordable education experience. Books will never go away, but will need to transform into a better, more efficient learning tool, synched with an array of resources to personalize students needs. As content creators and curators, our goal should always be to find ways to enrich and impact student success. Words & Numbers will gladly provide a packet of information on how to think through and organize this model in a very detailed way. The packet includes sample schedules, surveys for reviewers, reviewer and contributor vetting process, training for originality as well as product development steps. To receive this free packet of information and to learn more about the rapid book development process, please contact David Graham at dgraham@wordsandnumbers.com.

For more information contact: DAVID GRAHAM AT DGRAHAM@WORDSANDNUMBERS.COM

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