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Textbook manifesto (2016)

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Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#91

Post by MaysonL »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #73
taeric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being opposed by elected officials is one thing. What truly baffles me is being opposed by the very people that are adversely affected. Many policies are literally convincing poor families that it is in their best interests to help support the frail legacy of billionaires. How!?

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

They're also created by removing roadblocks for job creators to create jobs. Think about all the people who were locked into jobs because switching or going out on their own would require unaffordable (or perhaps unobtainable) health insurace for themselves or family members with preexisting conditions.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#92

Post by tbrownaw »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #73
taeric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being opposed by elected officials is one thing. What truly baffles me is being opposed by the very people that are adversely affected. Many policies are literally convincing poor families that it is in their best interests to help support the frail legacy of billionaires. How!?

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs.

1) A bit over a third of poor people (in the US) do work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm

2) Reducing poverty can work by either raising the baseline (stronger social safety net, maybe higher minimum wage, better overall vocational education, etc) or by moving individuals into other economic classes (getting people (better) jobs). I think raising the baseline is probably a better approach, since it works by not leaving people behind.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#93

Post by sitkack »

dctoedt wrote: post #80
worldsayshi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I was in an international class, the study language was english, the textbooks were American. Extremely dense and horrible to read tombs. In my early courses most of the material was in swedish. Textbooks were a tenth of the size and had at least some personality. Some of them were quite enjoyable. Those were readable.

s/tombs/tomes/ [0] [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tome

I think the meaning is more accurate with tombs.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#94

Post by sitkack »

gcb0 wrote: post #53
swimfar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my US university the school had a (free) text book rental program. I never had to buy any books. edit: Obviously the initial cost of the books is paid for by tuition, but it's much less than the cost of each student buying their own book.

lucky you. California universities living largely on subsides just moved to Pearson's online homework. Requiring every single student (even the ones taking a extra language class for a single semester) to buy $300+ dollars text books just for the online access code for the lame online homework website. you simply cannot pass any class without the $300+ ticket from that publisher. Oh yes and the actual books are old a…

The autograder homework hack by Pearson is epic. I wonder how many people from ticketmaster and comcast started working at Pearson?

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#95

Post by sitkack »

jdeisenberg wrote: post #55

I agree that textbook costs are exorbitant, and I use open source, online, or very low cost books when teaching at the community college level. I've been using the interactive version of the "Think Like a Computer Scientist" book when teaching the introductory programming course. The students still don't read the material, at least not before the lecture.

Start with a quiz?

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#96

Post by ziikutv »

Its funny. This was my exact shower thought this morning.

I find books overly verbose, and too formal. I do not think there is a need to dumb-down technical content. I also disagree with having a page limit as it would likely lead to omission of topics that might be otherwise useful.

I think the publishing industry has to change or be weeded out by self-publishers and video makers. I have learned many topics of my courses through Slide decks and Youtube videos to avoid reading.

My plan was to start re-learning everything from Uni and write informal tutorial (snippets) of blog posts about the topics and perhaps compiling to a open source book. I'll keep you guys posted so you folks can blindly upvote my fancy submission titles =D

Addendum: I'd really like to pug Brian Douglas' Youtube playlists on Control Theory. AMAZING. Got an A thanks to him.

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#97

Post by chipperyman573 »

igk wrote: post #67
lvh wrote: post #32

In many European countries, this problem was resolved by what I feel is mostly student pressure. Our student union (for lack of better word) owned printing equipment and worked with most professors to do exactly what's suggested in this article: most professors wrote their own books (not 140 pages, though). Most of my textbooks were between 2 and 7 EUR, which I'm led to believe is approximately at cost. Occasionally,…

Was in the students union for my faculty. We pulled out all stops to make things as efficient and cheap as possible(we actually sold them below cost because we found other ways to subsidise them). 10ish euro maximum performance semester for all the textbooks that were used in the classes, and printing thesis was 50 % of the next cheapest option... if we had doubled our prices. We also did "university politics", basic…

>We also did "university politics", basically creating pressure for professors to make good textbooks. I typeset one myself for a professor who wanted to "beat" another one.

Out of curiosity, how would his textbook beat another colleague's?

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#98

Post by ivansavz »

I like the suggested price point of under 50$. Perhaps I'd go even lower and require This is the approach I've been following with my MATH&PHYS and LA books, and I will continue to use with future titles.

I guess the ideal case for students would be OER, but then when everybody owns the book nobody is particularly invested in maintaining it and improving it...

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#99

Post by ziikutv »

chrisseaton wrote: post #74
ziikutv wrote: post #39

Professors often do not have the choice to pick a book. They have to teach off of one recommended by department. more politics into the education industry.

But 'the department' is nothing more than all the professors grouped together.

Yeah and one of them decided to venture into book writing, had connections and was friends with other professors...

That's one way to sell that pig lipsticks.

Edit: And incorrect about department = array(Professors)

Re: Textbook manifesto (2016)

#100

Post by ivansavz »

harry8 wrote: post #90

Richard Feynman's adventures in textbooks 50 years as told in "Surely you're joking" ago are still instructive. It's pretty embarrassing that it is still so bad. More power to Downey, support him. Perfect is the enemy of good and the ally of the status quo, which is horrible.

You refer to this story, right? http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
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