How to Become an Author at Pedagogy Education
Pedagogy is seeking authors with a passion for sharing their knowledge and experience with their students. It is the author’s inspiration delivered through a variety of online teaching methods that creates enthusiasm in the people who have an interest in your topic. Prospective authors should be able to demonstrate expertise in their selected subject matter. This is demonstrated through education, experience, or both.
Continue reading to learn more about the process of becoming an author with Pedagogy!
Steps to Creating a Continuing Education Course
Each course must begin with three components which provide direction and structure for your course. These three necessary components are the outline, course description, and objectives. These three components should be presented to the education planning committee for approval prior to writing the course.
- Outline - Start the writing process by forming an outline, or list, of the big-picture topics you would like to cover within the course. This outline forms the skeleton of your course which you will fill in with subtopics and further details later. Pay close attention to the layout of your outline as it will establish the organization and flow of your course.
- Introduction - The introduction of your course is an important factor in successfully selling your education. Your introduction should capture the student’s attention and describe why your course is important for them.
- Objectives - A well-constructed learning objective describes an intended learning outcome. It is a description of an intended learning outcome and is the basis for the rest of the learning activity. Objectives should contain three parts: the conditions under which the behavior is performed, a verb that defines the behavior itself, and the degree (or criteria) to which a student must perform the behavior. If any one of these three components are missing, the objective cannot communicate accurately.
References
References should be included with footnote citations throughout the course. Each course should also conclude with a reference list of every book, journal, article, and online reference cited within your course. It is the author’s responsibility to make sure all cited references are current (less than 5 years old) throughout the entire period that your course is being sold. It is important that authors provide evidence-based information. For a health reference resource to be genuinely evidence-based, conclusions must be based on the best available evidence. Conclusions may be based on the best available evidence only if the evidence is consistently and systematically identified, evaluated and selected.
Note on Plagiarism: As authors we must guard against plagiarism. Merriam-Webster defines plagiarism as follows: “To take and pass off (ideas or words of another) as one’s own; to use (another’s production) without crediting the source.” To avoid plagiarizing, one must credit the source from which the information was received by citing them in the reference list. If there is use of someone else’s exact words, quotation marks must be properly utilized, and the source listed in the reference list.
Review Questions and Exams
All continuing education courses require an examination of the knowledge reviewed in the course. Course objectives are usually met or completed through your testing, so it is important to refer to your objectives when writing exam questions to ensure all are met. As the author, you may consider weighting more important chapters more heavily to ensure the competency of the students. Our tests are designed to generate a random selection of questions from a test bank, so no test is ever the same. To accomplish this, it is necessary to have an ample amount of exam questions for each chapter. It is our policy at Pedagogy to have review questions at the end of every chapter to ensure the student is grasping the main concepts. Please write one or two review questions for this purpose. Review and exam questions are submitted separately from the course document.
Author Biography
It is important to Pedagogy to feature our authors’ unique educational backgrounds, expertise, and credentials for customer reference. Authors must submit a brief biography and a clear headshot in a separate document along with all course materials upon submission of their first course. We consider our authors to be our business partners and encourage them to provide links to their own websites and social media pages. Any blog post contributions you would like offer for our various outlets offers you and your course additional promotion.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should my course be?
Courses need to be at least one hour in length for accreditation purposes. Sometimes courses that cover a large amount of subject matter may benefit from breaking the course down into shorter, one-hour segments. We may then offer a package of all the courses together at a discount as well as offering them individually. One of our accreditors states that approximately 3,000 words or 15 pages of double spaced, typed content is approximately one contact hour.
How does Pedagogy determine the length of an online course?
Once your course is entered into our system, we use an automated computer-generated reader. The reader times each page at the pace a student would typically read the course. Additional time is added for the approximate amount of time needed to view videos, illustrations, charts, graphs and review test and review questions. The total time is used to determine the amount of contact hours.
What are the differences between online education and a traditional classroom presentation?
Those that have taught mostly in a classroom setting may be used to presenting from a slideshow-type presentation. The slideshow acts as an outline to your presentation and all the content you would normally speak on in between those points on the slideshow must now be typed out.
Ready to Write?
The expertise and knowledge that results from the time and energy dedicated to our professions are of tremendous value. Pedagogy takes pride in presenting superior standards of education to individuals who will benefit from it. Contact us at support@pedagogy-inc.com to discuss your course ideas, our commission structure, and other details. Please include a resume and/or a curriculum vitae for each course idea in your email.