Structure of an Editor's Work in Cross-Media Production of Educational Publications

Since the COVID epidemic in 2020, the system of educational process in Ukraine has been significantly altered. Using electronic educational resources and communication services has become a commonly employed practice for Ukrainian teachers. Hence, having profitable motives, the educational publishing houses in Ukraine are to shift the publishing workflow to making cross-media products. Cross-media educational editions refer to the paper coursebook or workbook with additional digital resources or electronic platforms. This study aims to describe the structure of an editor’s workflow when dealing with an integrated cross-media educational project. To collect qualitative data the case study method was applied. Taking part in the editorial process on multimedia applications for primary school in the “ODM” innovative experimental project in 2022–2023 years, the editor, i.e. the author of this article, has analyzed the new professional issues, coming out of the specific features of cross-media educational editions. It was discoveredthat the stage of preparing the multimedia scenary became more time-consuming than preparing an edition for printing. During the cross-media production an editor takes on the content-manager role in terms of choosing content objects for constructing multimedia lessons. Mastering knowledge in the fieldsof layout and design, motion design and animation, UX design, and programming an editor can coordinate the development team and communicate the workflow process to the authors of printed workbooks. The structure of an editor’s workflow during the cross-media production process also includes working with teachers’ feedback. Receiving each month’s recipients’ comments on multimedia quality the editor should communicate them to the appropriate specialists to provide technical or design enhancements. At the same time, working with feedback, it can be necessary to convey to the audience the reasons for the inexpediency to implement new solutions. Сonlusions state that studying editing workflow in the cross-media production for educational literature should get amore comprehensive approach. Having collected more representative data with the survey method it will be possible to define new necessary editor’s qualifications in publishing workflow. Deeper coverage of the cross-media publications' preparation process has the potential to explain unsuccessful experiments in introducing electronic textbooks to Ukrainian schools.

Herasymova, O. (2024). Structure of an Editor's Work in Cross-Media Production of Educational Publications. Children's literature: interdisciplinary discourse, 1 (1), 98 – 108.