4 ms·

This semester we have switched to an OER (it is only the second week so I don't know how well it is working)but the last two years we have used a book from Ceng

This semester we have switched to an OER (it is only the second week so I don't know how well it is working)but the last two years we have used a book from Cengage. The powerpoint slides and test questions that they provided were of terrible quality. I did base my powerpoint slides off of them but changed them quite a bit - including basic things like fix typos. The course was taught by several people and we came together to make a test bank and some of the questions from Cengage may have made it into that. More than that, however, Cengage (and I'm sure the other publishers as well) have been making a hard sell for their online interactive stuff and their ebooks. A year or so ago they came and made a pitch to us talking about how much cheaper they are for students (of course the students can't sell the ebooks back and can't buy used copies and their access to the book goes away after a year...) and how awesome the interactive online stuff was. Luckily, the course director is kind of a self-professed Luddite and didn't really care for it but other people at the meeting bought the sales pitch completely so if we had a different course director I could see being forced to use this drmed junk.

dougmccune 10y ago
Really cool to hear about the OER adoption, I'd love to hear more about the decision process. From another comment in this thread it sounds like people in your dept actually wrote/revised significant content of the text. That's both awesome in that you/your peers can update the content that you need, and disappointing, in that it's not going to work on a mass scale if every dept has to dedicate a lot of time to editing the content before they'd be willing to adopt it. I'd love to hear your perspective on the state of OER resources and their likelihood of adoption. Particularly if you think outside your institution.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  I had very little to do with it (last semester I taught during the staff meetings so I was a bit out of the loop). From what the course director said it was really based on the cost. I teach at a SLAC with a lot of first generation students who rely on student loads. One of the profs apparently mentioned it and then they went whole hog on it because we didn't like the current book all that much. Basically, they took a book that existed and added at least 2 chapters and then customized the rest. I don't know to what degree they customized it but I do know that wherever possible they added links and references to campus resources to make the book more relevant.
busyant 10y ago
This is a little depressing. I'm a lowly adjunct at one school and this is my last semester teaching chem with just an old-fashioned textbook (which is already overpriced). The department head has decided to switch us over to Cengage (with all of its interactive features) next semester. My suspicion is that the students aren't going to use any of interactive products. Do the schools get some kind of kickback from the publishers?
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  No. To the best of my knowledge there is no kickback (they did give us a Panera box lunhox and a totebag...). Like I said the sales pitch convinces them how awesome it is and how it saves money. I also think the fact that a lot of the online stuff can automatically be graded is appealing to some profs. I also think that some people are not that tech savvy so they don't see the downsides of drm that are so clear to most of us that read hacker news.
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  They get a more insidious kickback. They get to be lazy. They mandate the "textbook" with 1 time access code that results in them having to do the least work, and the students pay. Publishers have sold them on this value prop to kill the used textbook market.
- Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
  My son is taking a course at a local college, where the department assigned a $140 "custom" loose-leaf packet (basically a few chapters printed from a textbook) with "access codes" to some damned online thing. The class asked the instructor, who said: "Access codes? No, you don't need those. And a $40 past edition of the text will be just fine."

dougmccune 10y ago

Really cool to hear about the OER adoption, I'd love to hear more about the decision process. From another comment in this thread it sounds like people in your dept actually wrote/revised significant content of the text. That's both awesome in that you/your peers can update the content that you need, and disappointing, in that it's not going to work on a mass scale if every dept has to dedicate a lot of time to editing the content before they'd be willing to adopt it. I'd love to hear your perspective on the state of OER resources and their likelihood of adoption. Particularly if you think outside your institution.

jccalhoun 10y ago
I had very little to do with it (last semester I taught during the staff meetings so I was a bit out of the loop). From what the course director said it was really based on the cost. I teach at a SLAC with a lot of first generation students who rely on student loads. One of the profs apparently mentioned it and then they went whole hog on it because we didn't like the current book all that much. Basically, they took a book that existed and added at least 2 chapters and then customized the rest. I don't know to what degree they customized it but I do know that wherever possible they added links and references to campus resources to make the book more relevant.

busyant 10y ago

This is a little depressing. I'm a lowly adjunct at one school and this is my last semester teaching chem with just an old-fashioned textbook (which is already overpriced). The department head has decided to switch us over to Cengage (with all of its interactive features) next semester. My suspicion is that the students aren't going to use any of interactive products. Do the schools get some kind of kickback from the publishers?

jccalhoun 10y ago
No. To the best of my knowledge there is no kickback (they did give us a Panera box lunhox and a totebag...). Like I said the sales pitch convinces them how awesome it is and how it saves money. I also think the fact that a lot of the online stuff can automatically be graded is appealing to some profs. I also think that some people are not that tech savvy so they don't see the downsides of drm that are so clear to most of us that read hacker news.
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
They get a more insidious kickback. They get to be lazy. They mandate the "textbook" with 1 time access code that results in them having to do the least work, and the students pay. Publishers have sold them on this value prop to kill the used textbook market.
Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
My son is taking a course at a local college, where the department assigned a $140 "custom" loose-leaf packet (basically a few chapters printed from a textbook) with "access codes" to some damned online thing. The class asked the instructor, who said: "Access codes? No, you don't need those. And a $40 past edition of the text will be just fine."