You must submit your manuscript as an email attachment to Jennifer Britton, Editor in Chief: jbritton@valenciacc.edu

The editor in chief will forward manuscripts [without identification] via e-mail to the board members, who will then use a 4-point scale to vote yea or nay for acceptance.

The four editors will blind read submissions to ensure objectivity.

Rejected manuscripts will be returned to their authors and will include suggestions for making the manuscript acceptable. The board encourages revision and resubmission.

Once a manuscript is accepted, the author(s) will be notified via e-mail. Accepted manuscripts will be edited to make sure that they conform to the Chicago Manual of Style and to the appropriate documentation format (MLA, APA, etc.).

All Valencia faculty and staff may submit work for consideration.

The author gives The Valencia Forum for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, a publication of Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida, the right to first-publish the work and a nonexclusive right to reproduce, distribute, and publicly display or perform the work, whole, or in part for nonprofit educational uses via hard copy or electronic media. The author owns the copyright for the article or work and is responsible for registering the article or work with the United States Copyright Office.

The review must include the title, publication date, author, and format (paperback, hardback, e-book, audio-book). While the web-master can usually obtain an image of the book’s cover, it would be helpful if the reviewer supplies the image, especially if the book if out-of-print.

The book should be fairly recent in terms of publication date (last five years) or have relevance in terms of current issues, so it is possible to review a forgotten or neglected book that a reviewer thinks readers of The Forum should become acquainted with.

The review should point out the book’s relevance to general and/or specific aspects of teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education. For example, a review of Teaching Developmental Reading: Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Background Readings should point out how this text contributes to, for example, our understanding of how to improve the reading skills of college prep students or how to improve our college-prep reading program. A review of Acts of Faith, Philip Caputo’s recently published novel, might, for example, want to point out how the moral and ethical implications presented in the novel are similar to those community colleges face every day. A review of Consciousness Explained, a highly philosophical and theoretical discussion of the concept of consciousness by Daniel Dennett, might point out, for example, how Dennett’s conclusions about the nature of human consciousness might apply to teaching, learning, and assessment.

The review should make clear the kind of book under discussion: a collection of essays, a monograph, a history, an extended essay, a political screed.

The reviewer should present the book’s general topic, and then describe the general thrust and/or position. If the book is fiction, the reviewer should briefly summarize the situation explored without giving away any of the book’s surprises, especially if it is a mystery.

The review should be critical: that is, it should analyze the book for both its strengths and weaknesses. Here are some questions a reviewer might want to ask him- or herself to reach a critical assessment:

	Does the book do what it says it’s going to do? Why or why not?
	Is it well-written? Why or why not?
	Does the author demonstrate mastery of the material? Give examples.
	Is the information in the book current? dated?
	Are the author’s generalizations/opinions backed up by solid evidence? Give some examples.
	Are the numbers right? If the author is using stats to support his/her thesis, then the reviewer might want to analyze the validity of those numbers and discuss what’s wrong and/or right.
	Is the author biased? If so, how does this bias affect the book’s value to the reader?

Finally, the review should come to a holistic judgment of the book’s effectiveness and value, especially as they relate to readers of The Forum.