Textbooks are dinosaurs of a past age. They are out of date when they are printed. Instructors usually don't assign the whole book because there are only a few chapters that are really innovative and worth reading. Because of all of the players involved, book publishers, editors, designers, etc, these books can be quite expensive.
No takers? Okay, I’ll start. One of the main roadblocks to adoption at major universities is that the bookstore makes a great deal of money from selling those books that instructors make students buy for HUNDREDS of dollars then only casually refer to or use only a small portion. Universities will see this as a money loser and may not look at the wider ramifications and benefits to mixing and ordering custom textbooks.
Thank you for sharing an excellent lesson on Open Access Textbooks. I have been an author at Connexions for a while. I have also been a member of wikieducator and FREE Textbooks. In addition, I am a member of wiki books. I would need a few more lives to keep up and contribute to the free resources available to learners. I sometimes get the feeling that there is more teaching presence (teachers, social, and material) out there than learners unless we include teachers as learners. Doesn’t everyone want to learn?
OFF TOPIC – Please disregard as part of the lesson.
Re: Nellie – I know what you mean. It does seem like there are more teachers than learners. However, looks can be deceiving. A large the number of university, community college, and secondary school teachers that are baby boomers the next decade will see a teacher deficit, at least in the U.S.
Today in North Carolina, 1 in 5 faculty members are over the age of 61. Source
The University of North Carolina, in an unprecedented show of foresight put on town meeting across the state to ask its citizens what they expect from the university. From those meetings, and other indicators of need, the University of North Carolina Commissioned a report that is the guide for all future development at the 16 system Universities.
You can listen to forum recording here. You can view their other videos here.
I met the founder of Connexions a couple of weeks ago. He made a presentation at UNC’s Teaching and Learning with Technology conference. His passion for open access textbooks in amazing, and he’s also just a really nice guy. The sites you shared, wikieducator, FREE Textbooks, and wiki books, as you know, are not the same and are no where near as far along as Connexions.
The founder had a great presentation that can be viewed at http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted4/Catalog/?cid=1b082db4-72de-4fef-8bbd-adc4255837a4 Please view his presentation.
Rachel, Thank you for sharing the conference link. I am listening to the presentation on CMS. I couldn’t find the presentation by the founder of Connexions. The University of North Carolina seems to very technological oriented for instruction and learning.
This may depend on the topic. I bet if I went into my basement and dug up my math books, my physics books, chemistry (which I reread once to do some winemaking), I would find most of the material still correct and relevant.
When I am learning a new software language I like to have a book. If I need to jump around, I can look in the index quickly and go to where I want in the book quickly as well. This was more critical when I had only 1 monitor until 6 months ago. Still now, I’ll have both monitors on the go, thereby requiring a book.
Geof, You make a good point. In some subjects such and math and science (in some instances), material remains correct. However, I bet you can’t find any instructors still using those texts. Every few years a new edition comes out. Textbooks keep coming out in subjects that change very little. ...Why do you think that is? ....Why would someone take the time to write a textbook on statistics/physics when there are already thousands that are perfectly correct published and widely available?.... Do you think that has implications for the Open Access textbook movement?
Also, these textbooks van be printed at low cost so of chapters for a software were available on Connections you could pick the basic ones as a basis and then add specific chapters to your custom textbook that would relate to the project you’re working on. Once you’ve gotten the textbook that suits you best compiled, you can have a copy of it printed in the format of your choice (hard cover, soft cover, etc). When you compile your book, an index is automatically created so that book would still have a single index for reference. Would that be useful? Would you still rather get a precompiled book? do you see any advantage in mixing your own textbook?
If I compare my Grade 13 Algebra book (yes, we had 5 full grades of high school) with a contemporary high school math book (I’m a college coach for a Withrow student), on one hand I see a rather dry, colorless book compared to a book filled with color pictures.
Clearly, over the years, at least the presentation style has changed. Content too. The results may be the same, 2+2 is still 4.
I think I may have become comfortable with what I was given back then. A current student may look at my book and say “Yuk”, while I may look at a modern one and say, “Why?”.
Your perspective hear is much broader than mine, as you address the book industry, the univerities/schools, whereas in my replies so far, I have only loooked at this through the eyes of a person/student.
Geof, those are great points. I really hadn’t thought of the increasing expectation of students for texts that are not only accurate, but visually pleasant and stimulating. I appreciate your point of view. Thanks.
Anyone else have thoughts about the current expectations students have of textbooks? Do you think the publishing on demand could work? At what level?
Geof, those are great points. I really hadn’t thought of the increasing expectation of students for texts that are not only accurate, but visually pleasant and stimulating. I appreciate your point of view. Thanks.
Anyone else have thoughts about the current expectations students have of textbooks? Do you think the publishing on demand could work? At what level?
I have a completely different take on the whole textbooks issue. From my philosophical perspective, we should be designing activities first and then providing resources to help learners accomplish the activity provided. I always tell my students that the material in the textbook is only one source and that there are other sources to seek out to accomplish a particular activity. It comes down to the content versus activity debate. I believe that you must do to learn which means that the context of an activity provides the thrust to learn the content. Learning the content first is backwards in my eyes. I have never learned anything by just reading the content. I had to do something with it before I cared about learning really learning it.
My point here is that the whole idea of textbooks is completely outdated like you have said. We need to think about the resources needed to complete an activity and let the students also do their own research and searching to get access to content. Maybe if we thought of textbooks as the underlying practice and principles that need to be learned that do not change a whole lot then we would have better books.
Students looks at the copyright dates now and balk if the date is too old. I get more complaints on the copyright date and the students feel the book is useless because it is too old. There are some books that the underlying principles have not changed. The culture of the textbook in courses is a big headache and wonder if they are worth it anymore spending the time reviewing them etc.
I have to look at the Connexions site to see if it improves this or not. The idea of publishing on demand may work since you are able to change the book on the fly and republish if something is out of date. The current publishing model is outdated in a connected global world.
To me, content is an ongoing social dialogue in a learning community. The content is a social construct. The goal of any lesson is to transform a student’s mental model of a topic and that occurs through ongoing dialogue and exploration of the topic at hand. It is the underlying principles and practice that is most important to me and if I get the students to understand and apply those then I am happy. Students are only retaining a small amount of what they read anyway. I hope this makes sense.
Good discussion, and thanks for bringing connexions up. I had seen the TED conference presentation, and the idea was compelling.
The thorniest issue to me in all this remains “who’s authoritative writing is this?”. If a printed books comes to my hands from a well-known publisher, and the autors’ descriptions sounds convincing, it’s gotta be good, right?
Since the Wikipedia scandals, we do know that you can’t really know who is punching away those keys and hemorrhaging the texts we are reading. Connexions better have some ways of asserting who is posting what content, and making sure that peers are reviewing it and grading it mercilessly.
If Connexions works on this in a disciplined manner, the potential output for worldwide education is just astonishing.
Also, learning is achangin’ a lot. Cringely, that i linked here, makes quite a splash with a (optimistic?) societal level change affirmations: http://learning-2.learnhub.com/discussions/1479-post-by-cringely-on-societal-change-and-education
We already know that content creation has changed dramatically in the last 15 years, and that the internet now offers the possibility to every human being to post their thoughts/knowledge (if somebody can hold the webcam that will film you doing your thing or talking about it).
The game of publishing has changed, but the critical factor remains trust and authority, and Connexions has to give me that to become “valid” and “quote worthy”. I can only hope they succeed, and help bringing about world education ever so much accessible.
I must disagree with the Idea that textbooks become obsolete. I am trying to track down my old highschool algebra and trig textbooks for my son to learn from. The explanations, written in the time before the handheld mathematical calculator came into being, are more lucid and meaningful than any I can find in textbooks of Today. The problems given in those old textbooks are challenging and I want to read them again! Likewise, I note that in a modern current textbook on Human Reproduction you still will not find a good and comprehensive explanation of the hormonal interrelationship between ovulation and menstruation. This, in an age of increasing use of assisted reproductive technologies and government funded genomic biomedical advancement. I note that Grey’s anatomy is a textbook that has never become obsolete but it complimented by other sources. As the previous poster commented, new publishing methods and new content published instantly by whoever change the ouvre …the context…of any textbook. Just as an Academic creates an Ouvre of productions, a Textbook takes it’s place among many ouvres: all writing in a field, all books read by a critical reader, all writings in all fields.
Every textbook is simply a Book. To be read critically by the reader together with other books chosen by the reader to assist in his critical reading. What is lacking is the guidance from University Professors about which books to choose. Oftentimes a book from outside a Textbook’s defined discipline is the key to the next levels of understanding of the entire ouvre that a student has already critically assessed.
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