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academic rigor

An Artist’s Vision for Textbooks

June 7, 2018 by Jenna

artist's vision for textbooks
What does art have to do with learning? The team that creates your homeschool curriculum is much more than our Distance Learning teachers and writers. We also have experienced designers who carefully consider how the look and layout of a textbook affect a child’s learning. We’d like to introduce you to someone who plays a vital role in shaping our textbooks.

Del Thompson: Lead Artist

Illustrating Learning in Textbooks

Del is a man who tries to approach everything in life with passion and joy. He first started working at BJU Press in 1978 as an art and design student. He took a job in paste-up—putting together textbook pages by gluing clippings of text and images to cardstock—and soon became a regular student worker. In the summer of 1979, he became an illustrator. He found many opportunities to apply what he had learned in class to his work, and that process was vital to his education. One of his favorite recent projects was the K4 Bible cards.

Working on the K4 Bible cards seemed like a dream job to him. As an illustrator, he embraced the opportunity to challenge artistic traditions in Bible story art. For example, Bible scenes often show Jesus and Abraham wearing the same kinds of clothes, but would a man from Ur  around 2000 BC and a Nazarene of the first century have dressed the same way? You might find some of his corrections to typical representations of Bible times in the Bible Truths K4 Teaching Cards.

designing textbooksMaking Art Do More

In 2011, Del became the art and design manager over the art department. Since then, he has been unable to do as much illustration work as he would prefer, but he has brought together the textbook development teams in a special way by introducing the concept of storyboarding—and adding more snack times. With storyboarding, the designer lays out a project from start to finish to see how it works as a whole. The film industry and other publishing companies often use storyboarding, but it hasn’t always been applied to textbook creation. Pushing the content development teams toward storyboarding introduced them to opportunities for working together that go beyond the efficient.

Del says, “If you know what you’re doing from beginning to end, you can build toward that ending in a much more intelligent fashion.” Content teams now have the opportunity to work together to lay out the strongest product possible. Additionally, Del was able to help everyone on the art and design team to see imagery not as decoration, but as content. Sarah Lompe, one of his illustrators, was able to work with the writers to transform what would have taken several pages to explain into a beautiful piece of art that fused words and images to convey the concepts. You can see this throughout the Biology (5th edition) student text!

textbooks mockupEmpowering Learning Through Art

Del thinks that art in a textbook should travel “the shortest distance from the writer’s brain to the student’s,” which means he doesn’t want to make the content harder to understand. His efforts have thrown new light on the notion of academic rigor. Academic rigor doesn’t mean making concepts harder to learn. Academic rigor means including difficult content but making it attainable for young minds.

He believes that “if a book is put together with a lot of joy (like when you read a novel, and somebody is having a blast writing it), somehow it bleeds through the type. And if a textbook is put together with the same enthusiasm, it will somehow bleed through that text in a way that it becomes more than the sum of its parts.” And that is what Del and his team strive for in each of the textbooks they work on.

Your children may not always realize that the design of their textbooks is helping them learn. They may appreciate the pictures and be thankful for white spaces, but it’s not always obvious to them that those pictures and white spaces teach just as much as the text itself. The next time you’re noticing the color and beauty of your textbooks, take a moment to consider how that color and beauty helps your children to learn better.

textbook artist

Filed Under: Successful Learning Tagged With: academic rigor, art & design, illustration

What Is Academic Rigor?

September 25, 2014 by BJU Press Writer

image of a boy reading a textbook with the question "what is academic rigor?" above his head.

Have you heard the words academic rigor before? You probably have if you’re familiar with our products. But do you know what that phrase means to us here at BJU Press? We took that question and some others to Brad Batdorf, supervisor of secondary authors in the product development department of BJU Press. His answers will help you better understand why academic rigor is one of our core values.

1. How does BJU Press define academic rigor?

Academic rigor is the educational experience that engages students in the appropriate content, helping them to develop the ability to analyze, critically evaluate, and ultimately create new ideas or products.

2. What makes academic rigor important to BJU Press?

It’s vitally important to what we do here since we have an established reputation for this type of instruction and it is what attracts many customers to our products. It is also critical because it provides the ideal vehicle for strong Bible integration.

3. What are some examples of how academic rigor is supported in BJU Press materials?

  • Our authors thoroughly research effective educational practices, scope and sequence, and appropriate academic standards.
  • The student materials contain descriptive text and questions that promote deep learning.
  • Photos, illustrations, maps, charts, and other images are intended to promote deeper understanding of the content.
  • The printed and digital assessments target student performance at all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
  • The teacher’s editions contain clear learning objectives to help teachers promote this type of learning. They also contain answers to the questions (even suggested answers for those of a subjective nature), suggestions for discussions, additional research ideas, demonstrations, group projects, use of manipulatives, and more.

4. How would you describe an academically rigorous learning environment?

While I wouldn’t call it strictly student-centered or student-directed, I think students would be actively engaged with challenging content through teacher-guided discussions, group learning, and in some cases, projects. Hands-on learning, creative problem-solving, and other research-based teaching strategies would be employed to connect with students and inspire real learning. Students would be doing more than reading and memorizing material. They would often be relating it to other content and applying it to real-world issues. And, they would be comprehending the content, whether it’s science, history, or a reading selection, in the light of the principles of Scripture.

5. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers about BJU Press’s educational philosophy or view on academic rigor?

Our approach is one that embraces academic rigor supported by effective Bible integration. We care deeply and have a great sense of responsibility toward this end.

image of a wall with the BJU Press mission painted on it.

 

How do you apply academic rigor to your teaching?

Filed Under: Successful Learning Tagged With: academic rigor, BJU Press, core values, philosophy

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The BJU Press blog publishes content by different writers for the purpose of relating to our varied readers. Views and opinions expressed by these writers do not necessarily state or reflect the views of BJU Press or its affiliates. The fact that a link is listed on this blog does not represent or imply that BJU Press endorses its site or contents from the standpoint of ethics, philosophy, theology, or scientific hypotheses. Links are posted on the basis of the information and/or services that the sites offer. If you have comments, suggestions, questions, or find that one of the links no longer works, please contact us.

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