Managing the textbook publishers

[downer]

I'm starting to think about the fall.

These days we don't just use a textbook (if we do) but also have all sorts of publisher materials online and available in various formats.

But we forget our passwords, old material expires, new textbooks come out with associated materials, and publishers change the platforms they use. So getting ready for the semester has a whole other layer of preparation.

I've already been online to request access to access to instructors' material for the new edition of a textbook I use. That ended in an error message with a phone number to call. So I called, and eventually Josh answered. He was polite enough but he sounded bored. He seemed fine in giving me access to the materials. I'm still waiting for the promised email link. I guess I will wait a day and then try again if I still have no access.

How do you keep on top of all this?

[Parasaurolophus]

Only one of my courses uses a textbook, and I use an open-source text. Pretty much the only reason I even have a textbook for this class is so that students can have a lot of problem sets and an answer key. I just can't bear the flogging of publisher software and all that other crap that comes with the other textbooks. Besides which, I've noticed that those textbooks have fewer problem sets, and they cover less ground, because they're all designed to flog the stupid software.

For every other class, I just post articles or chapters from different sources.

[Grinch]

For most classes, I don't use a textbook. For the one that I do, I use a textbook only, no course packs or additional online materials. I really dislike the extensive fees to students for those resources, most of which require extra work for me and for my students. And I don't want a second platform. I want it all in the school's LMS; I hate when students have to access different sites for different materials and assignments and grades.

[waterboy]

A few years back I went to a small paperback from which I do weekly post/responses. It was about 80% cheaper than a typical text.  And....I still have all the imagery from those years where I had access to the publisher's materials.  :)

[ciao_yall]

When I taught, I used a textbook but allowed students to use previous editions if they wanted to. They were close enough to the current edition and super cheap online.

The online materials always stunk so I never used them anyway.

[Hegemony]

Yeah, I steer clear of anything online, and allow students to buy any edition of the textbook.  Just what textbook publishers hate.  Oh well.

[ciao_yall]

Yeah, I steer clear of anything online, and allow students to buy any edition of the textbook.  Just what textbook publishers hate.  Oh well.

Yeah. The sales rep was sooooooo trying to mansplain me how their online vocabulary quizzes are designed to build Critical Thinking (tm).

Because... pedagogy.

[aside]

As a means of controlling costs for my students, for the most part I use coursepacks I have developed and constantly update.  I don't make any money from doing so; the students buy them from the bookstore for the cost of copying plus the bookstore's markup.  They pay a tenth or less of what published textbooks cost in my field, and I have placed all of the online materials needed into our CMS.  I have had years to develop these materials, though, and it would be overwhelming to try to do them from scratch all at once.

[spork]

I don't use them; I build my own -- lecture notes that I've written, academic journal articles the students can access through the university library, links to mass media content (The New Yorker, Al Jazeera, etc.), and occasionally a mass market paperback that will cost students ~ $10. There are also an increasing number of well-written OER texts in my field(s). I would never subject an undergraduate to a terribly-written textbook and online ancillaries costing $50-$250.

[downer]

It seems like nobody uses textbooks any more, apart from me! (And even I occasionally don't use them.)

Yet the publishers are still in business. How is this possible?

[kiana]

I use them in math and I use the online homework. I teach primarily lower-level and developmental math, and I think that the gain from having homework that is automatically marked (for computational things) outweighs the cost of the software. I do try and choose lower-cost items when possible, and if possible bundle course sequences (Where a student would not take the first unless their degree program requires both) to save overall.

[Parasaurolophus]

I use them in math and I use the online homework. I teach primarily lower-level and developmental math, and I think that the gain from having homework that is automatically marked (for computational things) outweighs the cost of the software. I do try and choose lower-cost items when possible, and if possible bundle course sequences (Where a student would not take the first unless their degree program requires both) to save overall.

That is one advantage. For the formal course I teach, though, the homework grading comes at an additional cost (and it's pretty substantial). I think a few people have developed some open-source platforms that can do the same work, but I haven't investigated them. I'll have to talk to my buddy about it when he gets back from foreign parts.

So I just have Moodle grade those assignments. It's not the most flexible grading platform for the subject, and it takes a little time to figure out how to set up the questions for it, but it's good enough for my purposes. And it means that students don't end up conflating the software's bizarre language and properties with actual elements of the formal content they're learning.

[ciao_yall]

I use them in math and I use the online homework. I teach primarily lower-level and developmental math, and I think that the gain from having homework that is automatically marked (for computational things) outweighs the cost of the software. I do try and choose lower-cost items when possible, and if possible bundle course sequences (Where a student would not take the first unless their degree program requires both) to save overall.

That is one advantage. For the formal course I teach, though, the homework grading comes at an additional cost (and it's pretty substantial). I think a few people have developed some open-source platforms that can do the same work, but I haven't investigated them. I'll have to talk to my buddy about it when he gets back from foreign parts.

So I just have Moodle grade those assignments. It's not the most flexible grading platform for the subject, and it takes a little time to figure out how to set up the questions for it, but it's good enough for my purposes. And it means that students don't end up conflating the software's bizarre language and properties with actual elements of the formal content they're learning.

Yes. When I taught math I just loaded a bunch of multiple choice questions into Moodle. Took a while the first time but then it pretty much ran itself.

[ciao_yall]

It seems like nobody uses textbooks any more, apart from me! (And even I occasionally don't use them.)

Yet the publishers are still in business. How is this possible?

Selling standardized tests and the companion software to K-12.

[pepsi_alum]

I'm increasingly trying to move toward a combination of open-source and self-authored materials in my classes because of pressure from textbook publishers to assign their proprietary web resources. Such web-based platforms are not at all necessary in my field.

Another thing I'm trying this upcomimg semester in one of my classes is to put a handful of older edition on reserve at the library that students can check out as a reference if they are so inclined. This works, because we'll cover most textbook material in class, and students can refer back to the book if they need something clarified.