PM4ID, the First Canadian Edition, offers new features and improvements to the original textbook, including:

• New cover design, updated fonts, and enhanced list of Glossary terms.
• Addition of four new case studies, written to deepen reader comprehension.
• Inclusion of images with diverse skin tones, body shapes, abilities, and gender to increase representation.
• Revised content to feature Canadian spelling and contexts.
• Overall review of all written material in the textbook with detailed notes documenting content revisions.
• Comprehensive revisions based on peer reviews collected by the Open Textbook Library.
• Significant revisions to Chapter 6, with major updates to content on communication and scheduling (project management) software focusing on web-based solutions.
• Multiple versions of the book, including PDF, EPUB, HTML, MOBI, and all chapters are available in natural voice audio recordings.
• A series of video cases with interviews of Canadian instructional design experts (video and audio recordings).
• Interactive reviews of three chapters using H5P activities.

Recommendations for Future Editors

Alignment of writing style and formatting consistency

It is challenging to ensure that the writing style is consistent throughout the textbook with a diverse team of contributors. We feel that aligning the writing style and ensuring uniformity of tables and charts are worthwhile tasks for a future team.

Accessibility functionality

A significant portion of our revisions focussed on increased accessibility features, including additions to the glossary, a text hover feature, and updated chapter audio recordings. Future editors should know that increased accessibility features lead to multiple locations for some elements. For example, definitions within the text are also located in the glossary and hover text effect.

It is important to note that if our work is revised, the glossary, hover text, and chapter audio recordings will need to be updated to accommodate those changes. The text-to-speech (TTS) translation can also be updated as the technology improves.

Content accuracy and relevance

One challenge that we faced as a team was not being experts on the topic of project management. We believe that some textbook sections would benefit from a review by project management experts to determine accuracy and relevancy. For example, chapter six required major revisions, so other chapters may need significant modifications. Two sections where this might be true are 9.6 and 10.2.

Questions and key takeaways 

If time permitted, we would have contributed additional questions and key takeaways with learning points for the reader to consider. Future editors may want to contribute additional questions and key takeaways to improve reader understanding.

Instructional design case studies and video interviews

Chapters that might benefit from case studies include chapters 5, 7, and 9. Additional video interviews from instructional design experts across Canada would contribute a broader representation of project management strategies and best practices.

Contact

If you or your class want to help improve the First Canadian Edition of Project Management for Instructional Designers, contact Paula MacDowell (paula.macdowell@usask.ca).