Comments on: teaching without textbooks.

By: wally metts

wally metts — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:23:11 +0000

I like the conditions you’ve outlined here. Very helpful. I ues my point is that we should be on top of things. I do think you could do this in a field without a lot of changes by depending more on seminal works.

By: Reuben Rubio

Reuben Rubio — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:33:00 +0000

We have been teaching a class w/o a textbook for the past 5 years. The class is the School of Ed’s educational technology course, w/ a course in basic computing as a prereq.

What facilitates teaching w/o a textbook:
- instructors that really know the field well, and are up-to-date (this is the most crucial, I’d hate to try this in an area where I wasn’t on top of things; thankfully all 5 of the instructors fit this description well in this area)
- field that has lots of changes in the background knowledge and skill set (very true in this case), so that textbooks become obsolete fairly quickly and the “textbook economy” does not favor used books
- lots of information is available on the web (e.g. standards documents, tutorials are available online; many who research and write about technology are also committed to online publishing and free access to their work, which is a hallmark of this field and also helps)
- very well developed Blackboard site
- course fills a very specific niche in the curriculum

By: the future of learning. « in-tech-rity

the future of learning. « in-tech-rity — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:00:11 +0000

[...] I think there will be less dependence on textbooks and more emphasis on collaboration. But conversations about the canon of the classroom will be [...]

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:47:35 +0000

I agree that textbooks are increasingly a dying industry, and maybe for the better. In my experience, while some students have access to their parents’ wallet for learning content materials, many students work their way through college, paying out of their own pockets for material. For these students, the sting of expensive textbooks is especially harsh.

To what degree are email, internet reading materials, and online courseware contributing to the stagnation of the pulp and paper industry? We can imagine the impact to small degrees. With online news, newspaper companies are forced to adapt. With online courseware, textbooks. And so on.

For those of us who like to imagine a world that consumes fewer natural resources, the “greenness” of email and online courseware is exciting. However, though we’re less dependent on paper for reading materials, we still use an exorbitant amount of paper–especially in product packaging.

I know that many pulp and paper companies are finding it harder to stay alive. In states like Maine, a significant number of people depend on the industry’s prosperity, and the paper-pulp industry is a dying one. Maybe it’s time.