---
title: "E: Textbook design for learning"
---

- #public<span id='Xi8dVj_72'/>
- Thinking about textbooks,<span id='DKclQisnj'/>
    - the [blog post](https://teacherhead.com/2020/04/20/the-next-edu-revolution-textbooks/) about why textbooks are good for learning<span id='O0A9BkTWL'/>
    - and all the lists of really good textbooks<span id='EOeg0l-M1'/>
        - **The Best Textbook on Every Subject**<span id='snYklfitj'/>
- Imagine taking a transcript of [[Awakening From the Meaning Crisis]].<span id='7-DERn2yG'/>
    - How long would it be, how long would the entire series be if it was published as a book?<span id='jSvyWJn_p'/>
    - How much editing would you need to turn it into readable prose?<span id='LGls31hzi'/>
    - What would it look like to turn it into, not a nonfiction book, but a textbook?<span id='7h4bvEJIS'/>
    - Where is the best research on effective textbooks for learning for efficient adult learners?<span id='lXtR90BGt'/>
        - There are often many graphical elements and pedagogical elements<span id='ItsfuliGD'/>
            - definitions of terms.<span id='g4w7htaZy'/>
            - Pull outs with anecdotes, or more details.<span id='BQ8jn7Poq'/>
                - And I guess this can be seen in one way, as kind of a zoomable interface where you can go more or less in depth in one way.<span id='Znln8MSO1'/>
                - And you can also skip explanations if you already know the concept.<span id='AeCNPkvJc'/>
            - There can be<span id='dQiII5AVG'/>
                - visualizations,<span id='JjAWcMJha'/>
                - graphs,<span id='J4JqBhW5D'/>
                - knowledge graphs,<span id='JBLNCDVSV'/>
                - pre-reading questions<span id='3SOSqO9wP'/>
                - post reading questions,<span id='ARsG-1ZV4'/>
                - learning objectives<span id='TG3vl6EhM'/>
                - comprehension questions.<span id='vDudhUAyU'/>
            - Is there a good course, whether as a textbook or interactive on how to write a textbook?<span id='WRuL5It-N'/>
            - Are there good examples of interactive textbooks?<span id='_uI_Fh38v'/>
                - They don't have to be intelligent, but just web native with very responsive layouts<span id='U-Mn36pNd'/>
            - Are there good frameworks, or tools to author very nice looking web textbooks with all these design elements?<span id='5WKjLlB4m'/>
            - There are probably LaTeX templates or DocBook or whatever, for programming books, but the end result is a PDF.<span id='teKJ5mNYM'/>
                - That is very difficult to read on a small screen.<span id='uFt_ZB6vU'/>
                - Is there a good HTML template.<span id='dzaneARL9'/>
                    - Something like Tufte style with margin annotations. Table of Contents.<span id='kt5l557_a'/>
- It would be a really interesting candidate for experimenting with Andy Matuschak integrated spaced repetition.<span id='ANCpKlZeK'/>
- It could also grow wiki like with<span id='j2ulpJQkv'/>
    - annotations and<span id='og0IbsPO6'/>
    - links to interesting discussions,<span id='Ug6pfkT_g'/>
        - from reading groups or blog posts, etc.<span id='jxUceBAJp'/>
    - I wonder what kind of visuals, or explanations or even interactive elements, could be useful.<span id='e2pRhbBnG'/>
        - And to what extent they would be actually useful for the understanding or disruptive.<span id='DIGmD8tqN'/>
    - I often felt that textbooks from schools in Norway today are far too busy with elements graphical elements and pictures and so on.<span id='OlU6e88rg'/>
        - But perhaps it is working well.<span id='qXjZeNHI5'/>
    - How do you test the effectiveness of a textbook?<span id='TgphWHVFh'/>
        - What do you measure, at the end, retention?<span id='Hvk0KTPQN'/>
    - It's interesting how we have never ever looked at textbooks during my PhD studies.<span id='C1sr9lK8F'/>
        - Yet it is such a fundamental aspect of learning.<span id='pIh5Hx5rW'/>
    - **Open Learning Initiative** at CMU might be an interesting source.<span id='4EYGlZ2bX'/>
    - **OpenStax** are still just very traditional textbooks, written in a different way.<span id='dsuVQ7Cgd'/>
    - Wikibooks/Wikiversity.<span id='b8rDojWPH'/>
    - Brett Victor's stuff.<span id='cnj0x7vIb'/>
    - I started thinking of this because I was thinking about the ebooks about running a company in Norway, that I just purchased and worked through.<span id='eJNVo_SDy'/>
        - They are helpful because they are extremely well structured,<span id='lU-ADqtWW'/>
            - which probably also makes them easy to update every year.<span id='YY0dWDtiJ'/>
        - Of course there are no pedagogical features there.<span id='G2YWW9_Xw'/>
        - But I am so much happier with these textbooks than with a series of short videos,<span id='PLOTlVLRN'/>
            - like all of these **Teachable** courses and so on. Or a MOOC, or a webinar.<span id='KEi5u3J3E'/>
            - But why do so many people prefer videos?<span id='uFHwbPdvB'/>
                - Even for something as visual as drawing or painting. I think I would prefer an interactive textbook, which has many of the ideas or theories, written out.<span id='hz66iYUdJ'/>
                - And then, shorter or longer video clips illustrating specific visual aspects.<span id='cef2GG-OU'/>
                    - Is there any platform that works like that, or that even helps you build it yourself.<span id='vZ8NNW8AX'/>
                    - It would be interesting to talk to the **LearnAwesome** people who have been building these skills trees.<span id='JfWAf0BMA'/>
- I wonder if **John Vervaeke** could be convinced to release his material under a Creative Commons license to enable this kind of remixing.<span id='qqOQeoJBU'/>
    - What would it look like to make a skills tree of [[Awakening From the Meaning Crisis]]<span id='CgF2E05ti'/>
        - chopping the videos into small pieces, and interlinking them.<span id='7JPlR619u'/>
            - That's an interesting corollary to Roam, to have deep video integration with transcripts,<span id='EW_DnEy2d'/>
                - that you can then block indent, and you get automatically block-style back references,<span id='AGEbnSBZT'/>
                    - so that you could quickly see all of the segments from many videos talking about for example Shamans,<span id='-rWxn2zKw'/>
                        - just like the tools that let you edit video or audio just by editing the transcript<span id='Oey3aHzWu'/>
- What would it look like to add more textbook-like features to podcasts, even though you would be listening to the actual podcast.<span id='ChCE37mwL'/>
    - Think of the podcast as a class,<span id='t4Rhgb_F-'/>
        - you would do pre work.<span id='Pb0HKJ3qs'/>
            - Maybe some short readings, maybe, reflecting on certain questions,<span id='G1WJS6C9H'/>
    - then you would engage with the actual podcast.<span id='sEuGY3Ax0'/>
    - And then you will have some follow up questions, and maybe some **Spaced Repetition** questions that keep coming back to you.<span id='GI-w6FfQi'/>
        - Over the next few weeks or months.<span id='YeiU9L6za'/>
    - Are there ways in which we can enable people to create massive amounts of high quality textbook material from the raw material that we already have.<span id='SthJd787I'/>
        - And would it make big differences in people's ability to learn and retain.<span id='yVaQtSVav'/>
- What would popular nonfiction books look like if they were rewritten as textbooks?<span id='a_U2_Myf1'/>
    - Could you have a textbook overlay?<span id='40qUFfhNG'/>
        - I guess in a way you have that for with reading guides for popular/non-popular fiction, for example.<span id='yNKUyzZWA'/>
            - Of course there are probably superficial surface features of textbooks and much more profound details about how content is organized<span id='tvCYyoqkY'/>
            - Are there competing pedagogical theories about textbook construction?<span id='art3LG1J6'/>
            - **Behaviourist**, **mastery learning**, others? **multimedia learning theory** and **cognitive load** theories?<span id='g16XcCIrX'/>
- Is **Distill** a kind of academic journal that has had **textbook functionality** applied to it?<span id='1_jpFwcrY'/>
    - I just saw a tweet saying they wanted the podcast where someone is live-sketching ideas, but I've never really been so impressed by **sketch notes** and **live sketching**<span id='jlE2A77dD'/>
        - was pretty amazing the first time I saw it<span id='w0P8n_jGP'/>
            - but afterwards it seems to focus far too much attention on things that are not relevant to the argument.<span id='JIT_hIA9j'/>
        - However, having something like a **Compendium** facilitator.<span id='PvRXZh9X9'/>
            - Live mapping out an argument while a discussion or a debate or a complex argument is being presented could be really interesting<span id='n-HRT4Gmr'/>
            - building out a concept map as you're talking or going back and doing it over the recording.<span id='GphNgpNTC'/>
                - Why don't we have good videos of this, I should talk to **Jack Park** about it.<span id='rODuarZti'/>