Comments on: Textbook Publishers and Colleges Affected By Higher Education Opportunity Act

By: John Soares

John Soares — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:45:00 +0000

Eric, you’re obviously a very smart guy (despite being my brother), and you are probably able to write very good questions. But a lot of profs don’t. The questions are confusing or unfair, especially the multiple-choice and true-false questions.

When I taught I also wrote many of my test questions. However, for American government I used multiple-choice questions provided by the textbook publisher and then short-answer and essay questions I wrote myself.

I do think profs should give essay questions they write themselves — and then grade the questions themselves. You did this at CSU East Bay, but at UC Davis it was usually teaching assistants and graders who did the grading, not the profs.

I have little direct experience with online courses, but it seems quite likely there would be many problems with it along the lines you and Nadine point out.
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By: Eric Soares

Eric Soares — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:23:42 +0000

John,

I have to agree with Nadine and disagree with you. As a professor for over 25 years, I NEVER used a test written by someone else. I created every question on every test. A professor who does less is just plain lazy and/or incompetent. I also featured objective answer essay questions and read each and every one myself. That’s what I got paid for! Did I work 60 hours a week? Yes, it was my choice.

BTW, in general I’m against on-line education in any form because of what Nadine says. The students pay the money but don’t get face time with the prof. in a classroom environment. What a ripoff! Even at the Star Trek Academy students go to class and listen to lectures. What the hey? On-line education helps colleges save big bucks, and that’s it. At my old university, we wouldn’t hire a Ph.d. who had an online education, no matter how good they seemed, because we deemed on-line substandard. Why not just take correspondence courses and get a degree?

By: John Soares

John Soares — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:54:09 +0000

Nadine, it sounds like you’re having a very frustrating experience with your online course and your textbooks. $200 is a lot for any textbook — definitely near the top of the scale.

Not sure why your prof wants you to buy the $40 extra tool, but it’s probably because she or he thinks it will help you.

I do think professors should take great care when choosing test questions, but trust me, you likely don’t want your prof writing the actual questions. I’ve written many thousands of them, and it’s not easy.

Good luck with your classes this quarter/semester.

By: Nadine

Nadine — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:22:35 +0000

I don’t agree with the bill entirely and Eric you did make very valid points. However, I think that the government has stepped in because of the antics of the textbook industry and our schools. If this law is already in affect then my college is not abiding by it yet. My school forces students in certain classes to purchase “custom textbooks” which the bookstore will not buy back and other students do not want to buy them the next semester. I just purchased my advanced accounting textbook for $200.00 and now the professor is suggesting we purchase an extra tool the publisher provides for $40.00. What???? I already paid $1000 for the course and $200 for the textbook. But what gets me is I am taking this course online and there is nothing from the instructor to break this material down into laymen terms, no videos, no PowerPoints from the instructor. Nothing except for the online practice material that McGraw-Hill provides. This at least helps some but what ever happened to actually teaching and wanting students to understand difficult material? Instead we are just thrown more materials to buy so an instructor can sit behind a computer and grade papers but not have to interact with the students. Oh and since the new “tool” actually grades the assignments instead, the professor doesn’t even have to do that.
I don’t think professors should be forced to teach from a textbook that someone else had already picked out. I like the idea of not really having to use a textbook to teach. There are plenty of courses where the material really does not change every year and for those classes I think students should be encouraged to use whatever textbook they wish for referencing but need to be responsible for understanding the material given on the exam. The exams I am given will have some questions about a random sentence stated in the text. Nothing we ever even discussed as a class. I think professors should make up their own exams instead of relying on selecting questions from the textbook bank. Then students could even use their parents old college textbooks to study from.

By: College Textbook Price Controversy Addressed at the New York Times — The Writing College Textbook Supplements Blog

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:11:15 +0000

[...] wrote last week about the impact of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 on college textbook publishers, professors, students, and bookstores. (And my thanks for the insightful comments; please add yours [...]

By: John Soares

John Soares — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:37:33 +0000

Dionne, these regulations do a lot to help students pay lower prices for textbooks, but they don’t do much to add to the quality of instruction students will receive.

The number of students who sell back their books at the end of the semester dismays me. I kept nearly all of my college textbooks, primarily for reference, but also to refresh what I learned.

By: Dionne Palmer

Dionne Palmer — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:00:07 +0000

I fully agree that choice is good. If profs don’t intend to use the extra materials bundled with their book, then it will save students a lot of money if their profs have the option of selecting the textbook alone for their students. Seeing the textbooks for each course while registering could be beneficial for students not only for financial preparation but also for trying to balance the workload for the semester/quarter by seeing how much reading might be involved in each course. But, while I think that could potentially be a cool feature for students, I agree that it could negatively affect the instructors, especially for last-minute teaching assignments. It would be unpleasant to be forced to teach from a book you don’t like and did not choose and this could really negatively affect the quality of the course (depending on the instructor’s flexibility, creativity, etc.). I am also put off by the idea of “shopping” for the cheapest courses (as mentioned in the previous post). I think the third part of this law could end up negatively affecting instructors and course quality more than it benefits students. I would be really interested to hear a current student’s point of view on this issue.

By: John Soares

John Soares — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:17:40 +0000

Eric, you make excellent points. We both agree that the worst part of this is forcing instructors to identify the books they’ll use long before the class actually starts, and for all the reasons you identify. If I was still teaching, I would be very uncomfortable with that provision.

I’m concerned students will focus too much on the cost of textbooks and not enough on what they actually should be learning.

By: Eric Soares

Eric Soares — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:03:30 +0000

As a professor who had to deal with these types of text issues for decades, I welcome the part about unbundling. I have been whining to the textbook reps for years, asking them to unbundle. They won’t do it, because it’s very profitable and they don’t care what profs say. I think a law forcing unbundling is no problemo. BTW, I got around the publishers by either having no book and just readings, or putting the book in the library for check-out. Their loss.

However, there should not be legislation forcing profs to post the book long before class starts for many reasons. First, the prof may be waiting for a certain book or better edition to come out before saying. Second, the instructor may not know she’s teaching a given class until the last second, and may not want to use a book she did not choose. Third, the last thing faculty want is for students to “shop” based on which class has the fewest or cheapest readings. A crappy professor may say “no book” and get a lot of students, who will later wish they had gone with someone better. This is bad legislation.