Customizing Content for Your Classroom with Curtis Ross

What if your course materials were perfectly customized for you and your students? Not only does customization streamline teaching, it's also a highly effective way to meet student needs and increase engagement. Join us with Director of Christian Higher Ed and KHBCU, Curtis Ross, as we debunk some of the myths of customization from the time investment to the process, and much more. Get inspired with real stories of our authors who transformed their classes with custom content and learn how this dream scenario is a lot more achievable than it sounds.

Connect with Curtis Ross
Email:
cross@kendallhunt.com

Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtis-ross-270189103/

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Transcript

Jen Lewis: 0:08

Welcome on in to the Higher Education Podcast with Kendall Hunt Publishing. I am your host, Jen Lewis, Director of Marketing. And this episode today is one that I am so pumped about because I've been wanting to talk about it for so long, because I think it's a really important topic in higher education right now. Today, we're going to be talking about customizing content for an immersive classroom experience. Today, I have with me Meghan Peterman. I'm going to let Meghan introduce herself.

Meghan Peterman: 0:35

Hi, everyone. I am Meghan Peterman, I am Marketing Communication Specialist here in the Higher Ed Marketing Department. And I have had the pleasure to work with our guest today, Curtis Ross, on just kind of a number of things we've worked on, like some special projects. And so I'm super excited to dive in with him today and talk about what customizing for a classroom looks like.

Jen Lewis: 1:02

And you kind of let everybody know, we have Curtis Ross with us today, an expert in customizing content for the classroom. So Curtis, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and let people know who you are and what your role is, maybe how long you've been here, etc.

Curtis Ross: 1:16

Absolutely, thank you. My name is Curtis Ross. I'm the Director of Christian Higher Ed and HBCU. And for the last 25 years, I've been working with colleges and universities to create materials based on how they teach their courses, which leads right into this whole customization question that you have Jen. So I'm excited to speak.

Jen Lewis: 1:37

Yeah, which is exactly why we are calling you an expert today. So what we're gonna do is just kind of talk about your experiences and customizing content for the classroom, how that translates to Kendall Hunt Publishing, and maybe, you know, answering some questions that potential professors or people that you currently work with want to know. So let's just kick this off. From a publishing perspective, what do you think are the biggest challenges professors face when they're trying to customize course materials?

Curtis Ross: 2:09

The big thing is time. They often feel they don't have time to make it their way. So they just choose whatever's out there. And so they don't think they have the time, they don't think they have the resources. Some of them don't think they have the experience to do it. And also, the ability to make the change. Sometimes there's somebody over them that makes these changes, and then they're just sort of captive to whatever decision was made. So those are the biggest obstacles that I've seen.

Jen Lewis: 2:40

And then from a time management standpoint, why do you think it isn't as time consuming to customize content? Maybe give the listeners an idea of how easy it actualy is to customize content and how we can make this process a little more streamlined?

Curtis Ross: 2:57

Sure, the whole conversation behind behind time is, the way that we talk to a professor is that you're already doing it! We're not really going to have you do anything that you're not doing currently, which is formalizing what you're doing. And oftentimes, they find that, well, heck, if they do this once with us, then they're actually saving time each year, because they don't have to do it again. So we actually are able to answer that time objection really thoroughly right off the bat.

Jen Lewis: 3:32

Yeah. And I think I'm going to pivot off of that, because I wanted to ask this question early for people who are listening, who may not make it all the way to the end of this because I think it's so important: what technology? Are we seeing with customizing content, you know, what's trending, what's popular, what's helping students in the classroom, truly, in terms of technology?

Curtis Ross: 3:54

A big thing is, especially depending on the ages of the students - usually you're talking about the 18 to 21 - environment. They're spending a lot of time on the social media platforms, and whatnot. So they're used to little chunks of material, learning in a way that is really interactive. So using technology in the classroom that tailors itself towards the way they like to learn is, I think, the thing that's winning now, so you actually have a lot of professors who are leaders who are linking out to things on the media to prove their point, rather than having people read a whole book. They'll link out to something that's already doing it. One other thing is is that you have YouTube, and you have these these big TED Talks, and you have even movies. I've had I have authors who are linking out to Netflix movies, on shorts on different topics. That really engages the students a lot more than Docs talking to docs, which is what we call all this reading all the time.

Jen Lewis: 5:11

Sure. So let's pretend for a second, I'm a professor, I get an email from you, you want to help me customize content for my classroom. What does this process look like, maybe from start to finish, at a high level? So you can help people understand what the publishing process looks like. And I think removing the stigma that comes with it being very time consuming, or very challenging.

Curtis Ross: 5:35

Absolutely. First of all, we have a team. That's one thing that that really impresses a new new author is that, "Oh, you mean, I don't have to do everything?" Well, that's a big thing right there that knocks out the whole time. And then ability and access to resources. So our team at Kendall Hunt, for instance, you have a production coordinator who works with you, you have a permissions editor who works with you, cover creator who works with you, a marketing expert, like the ones I'm on here with, you have me, as you know, having experience in 1000s of publications, to work with. Also, if you're looking to customize, the authors that have created a lot of our better content, they would love to spend time with you to walk you through the process of how they got to where they got to, and creating the resources. There are authors are great resources, and that encourages these professors who want to create their own. And so by the end of the first week or so of working with the team that we bring, hey, it becomes like, "Okay, this is nice, let's just check off that list. We don't have to worry about it. Let's just start to build the content, the way I want it to be built." We're not trying to make you do anything that's not what you want to do in your class.

Jen Lewis: 7:13

Yeah, and I think that's an important note too, Curtis, is you're talking about tailoring their content. I think, maybe speak to that a little bit, about how can they create the content, but it doesn't have to be, number one, 100% authored by themselves. Maybe walk them through how they can pull from different platforms and different pieces of content to put something together?

Curtis Ross: 7:34

Well, first of all, Kendall Hunt, I mean, we've been around since 1944. We have over 15,000 titles in print, or ebook available. And a lot of those materials have been created for adoption, or customization, in courses. And it's been used in courses, and it's been less class tested and time tested. So which means that academically - oh, also, let me just add, too, a lot of our material has been content-reviewed out in the marketplace with other people who are either adopting it, or using it, or customizing it. So, in essence, it's been academically proven to work with the topic out there in the classrooms. So you're able to see our list of things, whatever topic you're in, borrow that material for on areas where you don't want to write. And in the Christian side, I usually say you don't have to start it "In the beginning" with everything. So let's say you're an expert...let's say it's criminal justice, for instance, and your area of expertise is policing, and maybe a volunteer piece, but you need to build a publication that has two or three other tiers that you're not an expert on. Well, you build just your two or three tiers that you want to build. And then, you borrow from the material that we have over here. And then you act like a bunch of experts on one publication for your for your own class. That's the easy button.

Meghan Peterman: 9:38

I think one of the questions that comes up when we talk about offering some content, but then using existing content that we already have from other authors. I think one of the top questions is, "Well, what about copyright? What about licensing issues? Am I going to have to tiptoe around that, and what does that look like?"

Curtis Ross: 10:00

Great question, great thought there, Meghan. Every single thing that goes through Kendall Hunt Publishing has been thoroughly vetted through our permissions department. And anything new that goes out will continue to be vetted in that way. So if there are things that pop up, like third party images and other borrowed material, we continue to update those items throughout the process so you You get a partner, you don't have to go through this whole don't have to worry about things like - I mean, you do have to worry about it, but we take care of that on our end, with our permissions process and our contracts process. headache-inducing process totally alone. That's right, you're not googling it yourself, and finding who owns this material. We make sure that ownership is very, very clear. And we cite everything as well.

Jen Lewis: 11:12

You know, I think something really interesting, or something really great about customization - and maybe you can speak to this Curtis - is not every discipline is a popular discipline. Right? So you've got criminal justice, for example - Meghan and I love to talk about our horticulture example in a lot of episodes recorded - because what I'm getting at is customizing can truly be used specifically for these niches. So maybe do you have any stories of small niche or just a popular discipline of how someone customized, or maybe an experience that you witnessed that was so powerful to how customizing is critical?

Curtis Ross: 11:56

Oh, sure. I have a number, but I'll concentrate on some that started off small, but then turned into something that kind of resonated across. I would say there's a world regional geography. You know, you can't imagine that changes all that much. But it does. You look in the news, obviously, governments change, atmospheres change. What do you learn? Well, from the beginning, we learned that where you are, relative to resources, pretty pretty much determines how often are you going to be as a world power. So one of my Virginia Tech authors use that as a premise to build a course: World Regions. It's probably been 15, 16 years now. Started off pretty small. It has been, it's a revolution that's adopted dozens of dozens of schools across the country, because of the way they do it. They hit with that premise of, you know, where's your water? Where's your arable land? Do you have a reasonable government? That's actually changed the way that world regional geography is taught, right, because of what John Boyer and his team did at Virginia Tech. And how he did it, it's sort of interesting, too. So we first started the first edition of the book. We allowed him to take a couple of dozen of the books and send it out to grad students at different schools that had geography as a grad possibility. And he sent boxes of these things to these grad students, knowing that this is going to be the source of the professors for the next 10 years. We don't do this all the time, obviously. Don't tell management. But it worked! Sure enough, these folks popped up in Alabama, Washington, man, MIT, Massachusetts, and Ohio State and Texas. And to this day, they're still creating acolytes who are teaching in that manner. That's the kind of thing that can happen with these niche type courses, because it changes the way that we actually learn and changes the way that we that we teach.

Meghan Peterman: 14:51

I think that gets right at the heart of the matter, too, because I think sometimes professors can be like, "This sounds like a wonderful thing. And, and it would be wonderful to be able to teach my course exactly how I want to teach it. But what I have right now is working." And so sometimes it's just easier and less overwhelming to kind of stay with what is rather than to customize. But I think what you're talking about is getting right at the heart of the matter. And that's like, the"why" you do it. And just the student engagement, I think, that can come from taking something that you already have, which is good. And really, really fitting it for your students, I think can just transform engagement. And I feel like you've seen a lot of that with your authors and their students. Do you have any stories of ways that professors really like change their student interactions in the classroom?

Curtis Ross: 15:51

Absolutely. There's another one where the whole idea of sustainability has been a concept that's popped up in the last, you know, 10, 15 years. Going green. The "why" we do something. We don't do things the same way. That that really ate up a bunch of natural resources. Now we're trying to do it green. Well, there are courses like that now, that get the student actually thinking green, across the different disciplines, and across the jobs that they're going to have later. For instance, that's going to start at the level when they're learning. Now what I mean: there's courses at Virginia Tech now. Design appreciation. On its surface, it's an architecture course. Okay, architecture, whatever. When it goes into designing a city plan, or designing anything- a business - and what are you going to do? You're going to try you're going to use trucking, or you're going to use shipping. Are you going to fly it over there? Are you going to build things using up all the natural resources, or you're going to have people come into the office, you're going to have people distant? These are all things that now students who are going to be employees, and then bosses, eventually, are going to have to start to think about. How you preserve the resources that you have. And so these are the types of things that that pop up. And by creating your own materials for your courses, and engaging the students - and students tend to tend to want to think outside of the box on those types of things.

Jen Lewis: 17:44

I think something important that I want to know as we talk about these niches - do you find that there are certain disciplines that customize more? Or do you find that it's just across the board per professor's needs?

Curtis Ross: 17:59

I think especially nowadays, the hot buttons are in education. You might imagine, you know, psychology? Communication. Seeing that I am actually in two different divisions, Christian and also HBCU, there are hot button issues on both of those things. But even in your traditional college university, these are disciplines that can actually engage with their students based on their student population that are coming in. I mean, if you're in a rural environment, and your school is a bunch of rural students, you want to engage with them on the challenges that they have, and the things that they're going to be going through, versus an urban one, versus you know, big college USA and Arizona State type of thing. So, in those areas, if you engage with them, based on what, based on their backgrounds, outcomes are a lot better. That's what we've found.

Jen Lewis: 19:14

You know, obviously, Meghan and I are in marketing. So Imy mind always goes to marketing ideas and marketing questions. So for me, I'm a professor, I got an email in my inbox from Curtis Ross wanting to talk about customizing content for my classroom. What do you think, other than time, what do you think some of the other drawbacks are of professors, not wanting to open that email or not thinking that it's a possibility for them. What do you think are some of the things that run through their minds that maybe you can answer for them?

Curtis Ross: 19:49

Well, what one of the things is, "Oh, it's going to cost so much." Often sometimes, folks convince themselves that, "Oh, this type of scholarship isn't what I'm supposed to be publishing, I'm supposed to be doing research, and then giving that away to some scholarly book that spends the next 20 years on someone's shelf." That, I think, it's just a total misconception. If ideas are all around us, bad ideas and good ideas, if you have a good idea, you expect it's gonna come from someone else? They're gonna be waiting for a long time. They need to trust themselves, that they're doing it the right way. If they feel that they're a good teacher, and they're getting there, they're having the correct outcomes. I think they should just get into the arena, and let it work.

Jen Lewis: 20:51

Right. And then let's, just for funsies, let's talk about timeline, because I know we talked a little bit about production and the process earlier. But in your experience, from the time someone responds to your email and the time that you guys actually start communicating, how long and how short have you seen this process take for someone to customize content for their classroom?

Curtis Ross: 21:15

Whoa, you're talking to the right person! Because "Yesterday" is always my answer to "When can we start?" Right? Because again, they're already doing it. Especially if there's a committee, or something like that. Oh, yeah, game on. As you're sitting right there - we have all the resources to show you. I mean, everything we have is ebook as well. So I've been in situations where I have my laptop with me - we start to work on a table of contents. Let's say 10 chapters. Boom. You go through this, this, this, this, this, this - done. Who's the expert on this? Okay, raise your hand. Done. What if we gave you all the background material? So you don't have to build into it. But you can make it unique to your student body and maybe even add videos talking about your students and talking about what you're trying to have them do? Maybe add a student or two in the process, too. How does that sound? And then, yeah, I've done it in an afternoon before.

Jen Lewis: 22:23

Wow. I'm like sitting here. I'm like, "Oh, is this take like nine months?"

Curtis Ross: 22:31

I mean, obviously, then it has to go into the production process as well as permissions. But if you're customizing using our material, that's all that stuff's already been vetted. We will take the Pepsi Challenge with our material against any anything else out there.

Jen Lewis: 22:50

You know, I'm curious, just because you've - not to age you here, Curtis, but you've been in the game for a long time, right? So my question is - dig back into the archives dust off the archives in the brain, or maybe it's been recently - but do you have a favorite, you know, project that you helped customize lately or throughout your career? I know it's a toughy.

Curtis Ross: 23:19

It's like, it's like choosing your favorite I have a favorite child - just kidding! child. No, you know, it's everything is different. I have the best job in the world, because it's a different conversation every single day.

Jen Lewis: 23:37

Now, I hope your boss is listening to this podcast, right?

Curtis Ross: 23:40

Oh man, it really is! Hey, but tell my boss it was very, very hard, though. It's a very, very hard job to talk to people and have them do it their way. You can imagine most people are saying, "Oh, no! I don't want to do this my own way." Now, it's hard to choose just the one. I mean the one that's really interesting right now, then, the helmet and concussion lab at Virginia Tech, which I think will resonate. That's resonated nationwide, because most of the students now coming in the school are athletes. They have been athletes in some way. And just learning about the effects of sessions and also coming from the people who actually work with the NFL and the NCAA and equestrian and all these other places is very interesting. The way that they they cater to the student learning experience, and it's on our proprietary resource, KHP Content. So it actually is a course in a box. I'm talking about the best practices of how to communicate - it's not trying to trick anyone in the learning process. I think if we want to take anything away from our conversation, the true authoring experience, the professor-student interaction is, "You want to learn, I want to teach." This is not a tricky situation here. I can help you learn. Let's do this together.

Jen Lewis: 25:24

Yeah. Well, just for the sake of time here, I do have, I guess, just one final thing is, if you could talk to anyone wanting to work with you right now, what would you say to them?

Curtis Ross: 25:41

One big thing is, why continue to do it the hard way? You know, the biggest thing I hear from potential authors

who are teaching a big class: 25:54

"Oh, I'm only using 25% of this book. Because it's a resource for my students." Students get the fact that they've just spent$85 for a book that you use 25% of. Why not save them time, save them money, stop wasting their time, and get on board? Let's do this.

Jen Lewis: 26:20

Yeah. That's great. Well, Curtis, we are out of time, and we genuinely thank you for chatting with us today. We genuinely appreciate all the work you do for Kendall Hunt. And we will leave your contact information in the show notes so people can get a hold of you if they want to work with you and want to customize. And Meghan also, thank you for being here today, and I appreciate your guys's time.

Curtis Ross: 26:48

No, thank you.

Jen Lewis: 26:49

All right, Curtis will talk to you soon. Thanks.