The e-book as an enduring and innovative course outcome

Purpose. In a graduate-level interdisciplinary course, Research with Diverse Populations,an interdisciplinary faculty team helped students author an e-book. A pedagogical goal was to transform students from passive consumerism of authoritative writings to active production of research resources.  A professional goal was to model professionalism in authorship and peer review. A scholarly goal was to contribute a durable resource that synthesized students’ own work and that of others into a wiki e-book on the course topic.

Background.  Definitive texts on research with diverse, vulnerable, marginalized, or stigmatized populations with health concerns have yet to be written.  Even so, a patchwork of rich scholarly dialogue is abundant on topics of recruitment, retention, respect, research design, and rigor. Rather than purchase a collection of texts, students created the text. 

Process and Project Description.  Through a series of sequential individual and group assignments students produced various products published in the e-book. One assignment was a “positionality” statement reflecting on their relationship to a chosen population of interest.  This was published as a 5 minute audio-recording.  Another assignment required co-authored chapters on the following topics related to research with diverse or marginalized populations: recruitment and retention; benefits and drawbacks of established and emergent research designs; and historical and contemporary exemplars of respect and ethical conduct.  Links to other research papers and podcasts were included in the e-book. WordPress was chosen as the platform for publication as it provided the ability to incorporate student work in innovative layouts.  With support from the university libraries, the e-book has been published and will be maintained on a library server.

Outcomes. In addition to mastering course content, students were guided to exhibit professional conduct as they negotiated copyright, conducted peer review, and wrote authorship attributions for their shared work. The eBook served as a meaningful, lasting application of assignments required for the course, and is now available online as a reference for other students and researchers.  The e-book format allows for updating as issues in the field change, and for expansion of content to include additional populations of interest to future students.

Conclusion and Implications. The wiki nature of course-based publishing promotes the aggregation of continuous contributions from students across semesters and the incorporation of review and response from colleagues and others in the field.  The benefits to students and the discipline suggest e-books will become a more common innovation in graduate education.