April 1, 2015
To adopt or not to adopt a textbook
Posted by Laura Guertin
I’m using this book for a course this semester… but maybe the better question is, why does a textbook matter?
Today is April 1st, and today is the deadline for letting my campus bookstore know which textbooks I want to adopt for my courses next semester. I struggle with this decision every semester. Surprisingly, it is not the decision of which textbook to adopt, but whether to adopt one at all. A few years ago, it became very apparent to me that (many?/some?) students just stopped purchasing textbooks (this USA Today article confirms what I’m seeing). The reasons for this are varied – the increasing costs of textbooks, the size/weight of carrying around textbooks, etc. [For this last point, think of students that must commute via public transportation and fill a backpack with a general chemistry textbook, a calculus textbook, and other textbooks that are inches thick. Students coming to campus via subway/regional rail/bus are voicing their concerns about the physical impacts on their health (especially their backs) in transporting these heavy books back and forth.] And the lower cost/lighter weight of a e-textbook option doesn’t seem to be as popular among students as some had hoped (Greenfield, 2013).
For my introductory courses for nonscience majors, where the course does not serve as a foundation or sequence course, I started adopting books written for a general audience. My hope was that students would purchase an affordable book and read the book throughout the semester. On Twitter, I discovered that I am not the only faculty member that has these same thoughts and struggles with deciding on an appropriate book for a freshman-level course.
If you could choose any popular press geology/earth science book to assign for an intro geoscience class, what would you choose?
— Erik Klemetti (@eruptionsblog) February 13, 2015
I replied to Erik that I have used several books with much success (“success” defined as the students actually reading the book, discussing the book, and telling me that they enjoyed reading it). For my physical/historical/environmental courses, I have utilized Why Geology Matters, Earth: The Operator’s Manual, Your Inner Fish, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Other faculty also offered Erik suggestions.
@guertin @eruptionsblog I’ve used Winchester’s ‘Krakatoa’ before with success & next fall will use Bardi’s ‘Extracted’ — John Van Hoesen (@Taconic_Musings) February 13, 2015
@eruptionsblog I’ve used Control of Nature (for natural hazards classes), and other McPhee books for more physical geology-ish classes.
— Kim Hannula (@stressrelated) February 13, 2015
But there are others that have decided to completely eliminate the textbook – and replace it with a cell phone. Tessier (2014) compared student learning in an ecology course where one semester used a textbook and another semester utilized cell phones to access information. He found that “student scores on quizzes and exams did not decrease without a textbook. In fact, some scores improved significantly.” Not every faculty member is going to embrace the use of cell phones in the classroom, but other faculty are turning to creating their own wikis and blogs to substitute for the content a textbook would provide. Some faculty are even allowing students to have a say in which textbook is adopted (Lewis, 1992). And entire colleges are eliminating textbook costs for students – see Lindsey Tepe’s post on “How to Get a Degree Without Ever Paying for Textbooks.”
Textbooks have served and still serve a valuable purpose in higher education – or do they? In 2006, a multi-day workshop was held at the National Academy of Sciences titled “Reconsidering the Textbook.” The 54-invited participants addressed this question: how does a 1200-page introductory science textbook fit into the cultural and learning environment of today’s student? The initial workshop summary offers some interesting thoughts, but no easy solutions.
Right now, for myself, it boils down to this… for nonscience majors in introductory-level courses, can I still communicate the same content, and perhaps have a greater impact on increasing student engagement and scientific literacy, with a book from the popular press instead of using a traditional college textbook with all of the “bells and whistles” of electronic supplements provided by the publisher? Or do I need both, a traditional textbook and book from the popular press? Or neither? A challenging question – and I have only a few more hours to decide the answer before my book order is due…
Additional sources for exploration
Greenfield, J. (2013). Students still not taking to e-textbooks, new data show. DBW post. (Article online)
Lewis, R. (1992). Textbook adoption: how do professors select the right one? The Scientist. (Article online)
Talbert, R. (2007, March 28). Escaping textbooks. The Chronicle Blog Network – Casting Out Nines. (Post online)
Tessier, J.T. (2014). Eliminating the textbook: learning science with cell phones. Journal of College Science Teaching, 44(2): 46-51. (PDF online)
Useful Resources About Textbooks (from the Reconsidering the Textbook workshop, sponsored by NSF in 2006): http://serc.carleton.edu/textbook/resources.html
Laura Guertin is a Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at Penn State Brandywine in Media, PA. Her research focuses on how technology can enhance teaching and student learning in introductory-level geoscience courses for non-science majors. Her blog focuses on geoscience education/outreach, science communication, and technology tools in the classroom, online, and in the field.
OMG. Really? I love to learn and books help. As a high school math teacher, i have had students declare to me that they have never read a book, cover to cover. I expect that college textbooks should contain the main facts of the course, and the lecture is dessert. Alas, according to my daughter, this is not the case. She hates going to a lecture where the publisher’s PowerPoint is used by the professor because the student are to darn lazy the read the textbook. Also, if you read the information as homework, you don’t have to carry the book around. I feel like an undergraduate degree, and some graduate degrees are nothing but a piece of paper. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave of Shadows, comes to mind.
I have not been using a textbook for most of my intro courses for years now, and I am happy with the results. I took this approach for many reasons, only one of which is textbook cost. The normal course of affairs is to get information from multiple sources and to integrate into one’s understanding of the topic. that information comes in all sorts of forms. One can learn a lot of good content from a well constructed textbook, and there a lot of them out there, but one can learn even more through the process of integrating information from a variety of sources with information in a variety of forms. This is an especially crucial skill for students in intro general education courses to learn.
I too have not had a text book in my non-majors class for years. I do out a few on reserve in the library as some students really like textbooks and feel lost without one. I am planning on using a popular book this fall for my oceanography book, but have yet to decide which one 🙂
In the fall I experimented with not using a textbook. Unfortunately, I think it hurt the most vulnerable of my students – the ones who needed reinforcement of the concepts multiple times and in multiple ways. Yes, some students could get the course content from what I presented, the handouts, and other materials, but there were several students that seemed to be hurt by not having the course material presented in a textbook with its highly organized structure. I also think they might have been hurt by the lack of learning supports such as review questions, a glossary and index, not to mention some of the learning support tools that come with textbooks these days.
About half way through the quarter I started photocopying and distributing chapters from a couple of texts and some students seemed quite relieved (and some grades improved). I tried to find equivalent online resources but everything I found was either way too superficial or way too specific.
I think part of the issue boils down to what is the purpose of textbooks in an introductory course. Should they be used an extensive references for students? Should they serve the goal of giving the students a fundamental understanding of concepts? I think that they may not be able to do both well (and most textbooks now fall on the reference side of the continuum).
I have used all web based content in an introductory Environmental Geology course for non-majors for a few years. It has helped a deeper understanding of specific issues-coastal change with rising sea level, but not as good an overall understanding of say tectonics. However, I am not sure that the learning that is not deeper ever stuck anyway.
An interesting article in The Chronicle (July 9, 2015) – In Students’ Minds, Textbooks Are Increasingly Optional Purchases. “The average amount that college students spend on course materials appears to be declining. But not necessarily because textbooks are cheaper. A growing number of students, surveys show, simply skip buying required course materials.” See – http://chronicle.com/article/For-Students-Textbooks-Become/231455/
Article in The Baltimore Sun from 08/27/2015 – “Maryland university to eliminate textbooks.” The University of Maryland University College plans to eliminate textbooks this fall to save students money by using resources online. Read the full article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-umuc-no-textbooks-20150827-story.html
Relevant article in The Chronicle from 09/08/2015 – “Why You Ought to Think Twice Before Assigning a Pricey Textbook” http://chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Ought-to-Think-Twice-/232877/
Relevant article in The Chronicle from 05/31/2016 – “UNC Press to Offer Publishing Services for Professors’ DIY Textbooks” http://chronicle.com/article/UNC-Press-to-Offer-Publishing/236646
Opinion piece on Inside Higher Ed – “Stemming STEM Dropouts – Traditional textbooks and teaching resources in these vital fields are simply not as effective as we need them to be, argues Smita Bakshi” https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/11/22/colleges-need-find-new-ways-engage-students-stem-fields-essay