Choosing and Using Textbooks - Do the extra pedagogical features in textbooks have any value to our students?
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Professional Development |
| Discipline(s): |
Engineering Education Research General Engineering, Engineering Science |
| Special Topic(s): |
Academic Careers and Issues |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Textbook |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
James Lang |
| Description: | April 20, 2009 article in Chronicle of Higher Education with downloadable document. Excerpt: "Ordering textbooks from publishers must be a more complicated process than I would imagine, since our bookstore usually starts asking in April for our fall-semester orders. I know many faculty members disappear in the summer, like migrating creatures, so the long lead time may simply arise from the bookstore's desire to clarify orders and handle problems while we're still hanging around the campus. Nonetheless, I invariably have way too much to do in April — senior dinners, awards banquets, ceremonies, evaluating papers and presentations, and even occasionally teaching — to give the textbook-selection process the time it deserves. Every April I choose at least one book that looks great to me, at the time, and then turns out not to fit with the course once I get around to using the book in October." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | textbooks |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: |
Summary of findings: "The group's study was a "quickie literature review," Amy said, after the conference, and perhaps it offers no groundbreaking insights on the use of textbooks for those who have studied that issue in depth. But for most faculty members, textbooks are one of those aspects of pedagogy that we handle on automatic pilot. Approaching their use more deliberately would take minimal effort, and might make a substantial difference in the learning experiences of our students." |
| Difficulty: |
Easy |
| Interactivity Level: |
Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | May 2009 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/04/2009043001c.htm?utm_source |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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