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Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

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Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#141

Post by loganfrederick »

SEMW wrote: post #133
entropy_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from my experience at an American university(though not in the US, so this may not apply). Some professors will assign graded homework problems by simply referencing the page/problem number of problems to solve. If you have a different book or edition then you simply cannot do the exercises. Also, as for requiring the newest edition, it's because bookshops may not have older editions in stock, so you cannot requ…

I think if any lecturers here assigned a problem set from a particular textbook (that the library didn't have enough of) without either photocopying it or putting up pdfs, conscientious students would complain to the students union about the lecturer, others just wouldn't bother doing the assignment. (Actually, in practice, tutors would just give out copies to their own tutorial group). As someone doing a humanities…

I just graduated from one of the largest universities in the USA and your comment about "conscientious students" complaining to the student union just isn't realistic. The issue is so pervasive across the majority of departments that to effectively complain would have to be on a scale equivalent to just voting on an ballot for legal intervention.

I envy the UK system in this regard. But the practical issues of convincing US universities to switch to the UK model are significant.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#142

Post by loganfrederick »

SEMW wrote: post #129
saraid216 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've been able to tell, a lot of the fiat declarations by lecturers actually come from hard experience with students trying to rules lawyer their way to good marks. If they declare with absolute finality This Book at This Edition on This Page, then students don't have as much wiggle room for whining. They can't say the material wasn't covered because, "Yes, actually, it was on page 149 right here." Stuff like that…

From my perspective, that seems pretty bizarre. Here, sticking to a single text-book (or the lecture notes) would probably ensure you didn't get a First - for that you're expected to do wider research & reading on your own. The lectures aren't supposed to be comprehensive, they're intended to give you a feel for the subject and a framework to go do your own research. And that's not incompatible with CamperBob2's want…

The issue of "testing you on memory recall rather than mathematical ability" is precisely why American students (myself being one) hate the textbook and university industries in our country. When the problem is phrased your/our way, it's obviously terrible. The business interests and incentives for lots of people involved on the textbook side promote testing on memory recall and limiting how someone is to "earn" their grades.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#144

Post by NegativeK »

tjr wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers are merely exploiting the highly school-like nature of university education in the US. When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best. But in the US, students demand that their education is like high school, with a set text and all, and if the…

Taking university multi-variable calculus (in the US), I grew disappointed with the explanations in the prescribed textbook. They happened to be renovating the math department building that year, and some staff were dumping out old "evaluation copies" of various textbooks. I sorted through a pile of them until I found one that I liked better, and used it for the remainder of the class, doing similar problem sets to t…

Were the problem sets graded? I'm assuming that, if they were, you did both. If you didn't, what was the grader's response?

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#145

Post by protomyth »

If you listen to the oral arguments http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de... , I get the feeling the resale of cars weighed a bit on decision:

"A geographical interpretation would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each copyright on each piece of copyrighted automobile software. Yet there is no reason to believe that foreign auto manufacturers regularly obtain this kind of permis­ sion from their software component suppliers, and Wiley did not indicate to the contrary when asked. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30. Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car."

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#146

Post by honestcoyote »

SEMW wrote: post #108
saraid216 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best. o.O Seriously? How have I never heard that this happens? That's ridiculously sane.

As someone who goes to uni in Europe (the UK), I've never had anyone wheel in a an actual cart of textbooks, but nor have I ever had a lecturer proclaim only a single textbook is acceptable. Usually they give a list of 5-10, with a few of them being recommended. Even where they clearly prefer some particular textbook, they'll still name a few alternatives. If a lecturer ever did say only a single textbook was allowed…

The profs certainly can't make you get a certain book, but your assignments are often based on the questions in the book and therefore, to have a passing grade, you have to get the book one way or another. Many, if not most, profs in the US will use book assignments instead of writing their own. In addition, the profs may write their own tests, but these also follow the assigned textbook so closely that studying from another book might be a handicap.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#147

Post by khuey »

greenyoda wrote: post #18
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #9

The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…

The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities. The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.

At the university where I studied, the one course I took where the professor literally wrote the book had the book on sale at cost at the university bookstore.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#148

Post by dhimes »

_delirium wrote: post #136
abraxasz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best class I've ever taken was an intro class in statistics, in which the professor recommended... no book. He had an entire set of notes, practice problems (with extraordinarily detailed answers), and problem sets. Every year, he creates new exam problems so the old exams with answers become practice material. Honestly, his lecture notes (and all the additional material) is so vast that a student would hardly ha…

That answer is essentially, "each professor should write their own textbook", since an extensive series of notes intended to be used in a course of study, along with practice problems, is pretty much a draft textbook. That could be an interesting solution, but is mostly practical if you already have tenure, since it is a quick way to not get tenure otherwise. If you spend your junior professorship time writing a text…

Furthermore, the first edition of most[1] textbooks suck- draft books much more so. I think that this would be a recipe for disaster.

[1] Note to the pedantic: I am taking license with the fact that I've only read a few first edition textbooks- and they sucked. "Most" in this case should be read as a rhetorical vehicle.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#149

Post by khuey »

SEMW wrote: post #108
saraid216 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best. o.O Seriously? How have I never heard that this happens? That's ridiculously sane.

As someone who goes to uni in Europe (the UK), I've never had anyone wheel in a an actual cart of textbooks, but nor have I ever had a lecturer proclaim only a single textbook is acceptable. Usually they give a list of 5-10, with a few of them being recommended. Even where they clearly prefer some particular textbook, they'll still name a few alternatives. If a lecturer ever did say only a single textbook was allowed…

In my experience more advanced courses in the US are typically taught this way. It's the lower level courses that have a standardized textbook/problem set/etc.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#150

Post by khuey »

saraid216 wrote: post #73
akiselev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that this SCOTUS has actually had a pretty good track record on civil liberties and these underdog kind of cases (Citizens United notwithstanding)

IANAL, and I haven't studied the issue, but from what I do understand, Citizens United made a lot of sense from a strict legal perspective. That is, corporations have always been persons under the law, and they were just affirming that. The issue, really, is more that they also affirmed the usage of this detail as a loophole because they were faced with either (1) negating a crapton of case law that depended on corpo…

Corporations have not always been persons under the law.
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