Writing the textbook as a class

Negin R. Toosi, William H. Rickards

It is challenging for students, particularly students from working-class backgrounds, to afford

expensive textbooks. This threatens their ability to pass their courses, exacerbating equity gaps.

Open educational resources can mitigate this issue, and open pedagogical practices go further

through empowering students to create accessible content. This chapter outlines the experience of

working with a class to develop their own textbook. Students gain practice writing for a broader

audience, can integrate diversity-relevant topics and multimedia resources throughout the text, and

are empowered to see themselves not as recipients of established knowledge but as active

participants in and conveyors of the process of scientific research.

Published 2022 in M. Fortner & I. Katzarska-Miller (Eds.), Empowering Students as Change Agents in Psychology Courses (pp. 63-71). Society for the Teaching of Psychology. http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/empoweringstudents