The idea of creating an open access textbook as a collaborative project, co-authored by students, emerged during the period of distance learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic and War. One of the courses I teach at the Educational and Research Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv is ‘Managing Multi-Platform Media Projects’, designed for master’s students enrolled in the ‘Media Communication in Business’ program.

The primary theoretical material for the topic ‘Organizational Models of Media Editorial Offices in a Multi-platform Environment’ was the relevant sections of my monograph ‘Digital Transformations of the Publishing Industry’. However, the monograph was only available in print, which limited its accessibility. In order to address this issue, my students and I have created an interactive, open textbook that is accessible and can be adapted to the needs of the students.

In collaboration with the students, we renewed examples and created interactive tests instead of traditional questions typically found in Ukrainian textbooks. Students interviewed editors-in-chief of Ukrainian newspapers, magazines and book publishers. We have included these interviews in the textbook as illustrations and audio files. They provided valuable insights into editorial management in multi-platform media production.

The result of our joint efforts is an open textbook entitled ‘Managing Multi-Platform Media Production. Part 1: Newspapers and Magazines’, published on the official website of the Publishing and Editing Department of the Educational and Scientific Institute of Journalism under the CC-BY-NC Creative Commons license.