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Open Textbook Initiative

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Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#41

Post by DrBoring »

Some mostly off-topic textbook stories:

My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com.

He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions which were in the back of the student book). At the end of the semester, I gave the answer book to the chair of the math dept to keep in the student math lab.

Also, one day in my physics class, some textbook sales reps came to demo this new RF remote with numbered buttons like a TV remote. Each student in class would get one. Their sales pitch was that it would allow our teacher to put a daily quiz up on the projector screen, and each student would use the remote to submit their answer, and then his TA wouldn't have to grade 150 quizzes. Also it would track attendance (which I thought should be optional for college classes). Students were expected to pay for their own remote, and I think there was a license fee per semester. Yuck.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#42

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #16
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

It's definitely not just the publishers. I think rackets like this work so effectively because bellies get buttered all the way down. At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically th…

I distinctly remember the author of my Linear Algebra courses textbook was the professor himself. He only assigned homework out of that book and you had to buy the book through his website/preferred publisher. It was not available in print at all so you couldn't even buy it in the bookstore.

The cherry on top, was that his book was chock full of errors. We were constantly receiving emails from the professor letting us know which problems HE HAD ASSIGNED had errors and which numbers to change in his own book, etc. How this is allowed to happen is beyond me and was beyond frustrating for all of us as students.

Worst experience I ever had with a teacher and textbooks.

This wasn't even advanced linear algebra, just the basics. You could literally assign/use any book published in the last 20-30 years and nothing would change about our learning experience. Math doesn't fucking change so often that a new book is needed every 6 months and everybody knows it.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#43

Post by hahamrfunnyguy »

somenameforme wrote: post #16
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

It's definitely not just the publishers. I think rackets like this work so effectively because bellies get buttered all the way down. At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically th…

> At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course.

I came to the comments to make this point. I had several professors with massive egos that made you buy their crappy book for their class. I remember on at least a couple of occasions the book wasn't even used!

At the other end of the spectrum, we had professors which used regular tech books for the textbooks and supplemented with lectures as appropriate. I much preferred this approach.

Frankly, the entire US higher education system is a racket and is long overdue for disruption.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#44

Post by klondike_ »

DrBoring wrote: post #41

Some mostly off-topic textbook stories: My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com. He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions w…

These remotes (iClicker) are in widespread use for large lecture hall classes at major universities. I don't know why they can't replace it with an app or something, but supposedly the point is that they work as an attendance measure because they only work when you're physically in class.

They're about $30 used and there's a large supply of them because you don't use them in higher level classes. IMO not the worst scam in academia compared to $200 book and homework combos

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#45

Post by BeetleB »

somenameforme wrote: post #16
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

It's definitely not just the publishers. I think rackets like this work so effectively because bellies get buttered all the way down. At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically th…

Most universities have a policy that if the professor authored a textbook he himself assigns, then he is required to return a comparable proportion of the royalties.

Perhaps he was forcing you to buy brand new so that he didn't overpay the royalties back (i.e. they may have had a simple formula based on the number of students, regardless of whether you bought or not).

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#46

Post by tomrod »

In my view, this can be part of the solution. The biggest issue is an incentive issue with tenure.

[1] Professors are critically punished for poor research, mildly punished for poor teaching

[2] A base level of teaching acumen is required. Improving teaching at all is costly, so teachers are willing to pay up to the opportunity cost of lost research impact for course materials

[3] So they systematize and outsource necessary non-core components -- course content, course grading (via TAs and PhD candidates), and where permissible test and homework creation and evaluation. Since they have no real impact to them for the costs involved, such as purchase of texts, they proceed forward purchasing into the racket

How to fix? Make teaching reviews (student and outside observer) factors for keeping tenure. Don't include as part of tenure review beyond what is already there. This gives you the best of all worlds: world-class professors invested in quality teaching.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#47

Post by dartharva »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

Ugh. As a non-American I have not heard a positive thing about American Education in any kind of media at all. There always seem to be a dozen problems with American colleges at all times yet so many flock there for higher education (mainly for Masters).

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#48

Post by mindcrime »

dartharva wrote: post #47
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

Ugh. As a non-American I have not heard a positive thing about American Education in any kind of media at all. There always seem to be a dozen problems with American colleges at all times yet so many flock there for higher education (mainly for Masters).

Sure, largely because the press are more interested in negative stories, because they generate more "engagement" and outrage and sell ad impressions and clicks.

Education in the US absolutely has issues, including the textbook pricing racket shown in this very thread. But at the same time, there's no question that the US has some absolutely fantastic universities and that the quality of education you can receive here is very high. I say "can receive" because obviously not all universities are equal, or even all programs within a given university. Still, all of those people flock here for grad school for a reason.

Note that I'm mainly talking about post-secondary education. Primary and secondary education in the US has a very tremendous degree of variance from state to state and is generally not seen as being in the upper echelon internationally.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#49

Post by mhh__ »

Based off my shelf of old books, the price of a good, new, textbook has stayed roughly the same. The quality of the text and layout is much better now, but the paper is pretty much worse.

Some really boring old radar books I own, have the most beautiful silky paper that the equations practically glow, whereas now you get stuck with the toilet paper edition for not much less than what that old one would've cost.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#50

Post by LambdaComplex »

newsclues wrote: post #33
deckar01 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been getting worse recently. Publishers are encouraging institutions to adopt programs that use dark patterns to force students to *rent* ebooks for the same price as purchasing textbooks new. The default release date for telling the student what book to buy is the first day of class, but reading and homework is assigned that same day. Unless you want to go in person to a book store and wait in a long line (or…

I used to work in the textbook industry. I’m going back to school. My networking course recently changed from CCNA to CompTIA network plus content. I complained that I pay tuition and my coursework labs and tests for over 85% of the marks, are all done via CompTIAs cloud service. And this costs over $200. On top of this, CompTIA charges the school thousands of dollars a year for the right to teach their content. So I…

> My networking course recently changed from CCNA to CompTIA network plus content.

Wow, did the school just decide that they didn't want anyone taking the networking course?

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