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Textbooks are flat out unnecessary. The notes on the board should be enough to understand the material, and the teacher can either write their own problem sets

Textbooks are flat out unnecessary. The notes on the board should be enough to understand the material, and the teacher can either write their own problem sets or copy them from somewhere and put them online. There's just no excuse to require a textbook for a class - it means the teacher is unable to communicate the material effectively and needs the students to read it on their own, can't be bothered to write or copy homework sets, or is forcing students to buy the professor's own book out of greed, none of which should be seen as acceptable. If the department makes you have one, just don't use it (happened in a few of my classes). For classes that need some out of class readings like history or English, there's no excuse to make students buy books when the body of freely available, uncopyrighted work out there on the internet is so easy to access. Good example: a history class I had a few semesters ago where the primary documents were a simple downloadable .doc. I've had lots of classes that worked like this, particularly my Calculus I/II classes where there was a textbook but homework from it was just suggested, not collected, and the lectures were entirely sufficient to understand the material and do well on the exams. Beyond being a pointless scam, I'd go as far as to say textbooks make professors worse than they would be otherwise by letting professors use them as a crutch.

repsilat 10y ago
I disagree fairly strongly. Maybe this is reasonable for lower level courses, but in students' third or fourth year of study it seems short-sighted to expect the bulk of their learning to happen in live face-to-face lectures. Requiring them to learn independently, be it from prerecorded lectures or textbooks, allows classes to cover a lot more ground and (importantly) save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. On covering more ground: this isn't just about expecting students to spend "their own time" learning things not covered in class, it's also about more efficiently using their time. With textbooks (and, to a lesser extent, prerecorded lectures) students can learn at their own pace. They can spend more time on the parts that they find difficult without holding up the rest of the class, and they can move more quickly through the material that they understand easily.
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  >in students' third or fourth year of study it seems short-sighted to expect the bulk of students' learning to happen in live face-to-face lectures. I'm about to graduate a 4-year Computer Science program. It hasn't generally been necessary in any classes so far to get additional information outside the lectures from the textbooks for me, besides in one online class where there were no lectures, or an instance where the specifics of the virtual machine's language you had to write a compiler for were specified in the textbook - written by the teacher, but free digitally from the campus library, so no big objection in that instance aside from that not being mentioned in the syllabus, and that he could've just put all that in the text file where all the lab-section assignments were defined. But back on track, the general learning of the concept of compilation/parsing/etc occurred in class, and you applied it there. Your notes and the task description were enough. >Expecting students to learn independently, be it from prerecorded lectures or textbooks, allows classes to cover a lot more ground and (importantly) save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. Posting the notes online is great and often necessary, as it was in my algorithms class last semester where long algorithm pseudocode was in the notes, but the way the class worked was that everything was explained in-class, with the premade notes plus running trough things on the chalk board, and only what was in the notes was what you were responsible for. It was an effective format. >save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. People asked questions if they had any, and more explanation would follow, and it wasn't a problem. Taking notes on paper while listening to the lecture in real time has been shown to be very effective compared to alternatives, so using lecture time on that is probably better than leaving any concepts to be learned primarily by textbook reading. >students can learn at their own pace. Lecture notes being posted beforehand, as it was in that algorithms class, works for people who feel they're struggling and need to read over the notes before class, and the notes are always there later if you need to review something. Though, the student will have to resist not writing notes just because the notes are already there - aside from the audio-to-paper process's effectiveness in learning, additional explanation/metaphores/comments will be given, especially in response to questions asked. I've almost never seen it be the case that one person holds up a class with questions everyone else knows the answer to - often many others were wondering the same thing, or the answer adds more even if you thought you already knew everything about that specific point. I also think enforcing a certain pace is good - it's happened that I've read on subjects on my own and forgot parts due to going "too fast," but that's never happened in a college class, so it seems like a tradeoff of classes feeling annoyingly slow sometimes.
jccalhoun 10y ago
So classes on something like British Literature shouldn't have textbooks?
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  No, I said in the post that those kinds of classes should just use downloads of the material. If some still-copyrighted books are substantially necessary then the college library should get digital copies. Are there cases where a book is substantially necessary to a course like that but publishers refuse to give college libraries digital copies?
thanatropism 10y ago
> I've had lots of classes that worked like this, particularly my Calculus I/II classes where there was a textbook but homework from it was just suggested, not collected, and the lectures were entirely sufficient to understand the material and do well on the exams. I'm guessing the exams were easy but you didn't learn much calculus.
- jimmaswell 10y ago
  I definitely learned calculus from the Calculus classes. I took calculus 3 recently for credits with no difficulty remembering anything relevant from 1/2. Some things I could give right now off the top of my head are the definition of an integral/derivative, squeeze theorem, mean value theorem, integration by parts, epsilon delta definition of a limit, second/third derivative tests, and a lot more. Test me with something if you want.
  - thanatropism 10y ago
    So what's the basic idea behind Taylor series? (A "proof sketch", or even a sequence of theorems relying on each other building up to the lightbulb step.)
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      If OP doesn't reply, can you? I'd like any insight I can :-)
      - thanatropism 10y ago
        (1) Rolle's theorem says that if f(x) if differentiable in the interval (a,b) and f(a)=f(b), there must be a point c such that f'(c) = 0. Proving this one uses maths that, although simple, more analysis-like than calculus-like, but it should be intuitive if you try to draw a function with f(a)=f(b). It has to come up and down so it has a point where it has a horizontal tangent. (2) The Mean Value Theorem is like Rolle's theorem, but "tilting" or "rotating" your function, so that if f(b) = r(f(b)-f(a)) then there's a point c with f'(c) = r. And this is already an order 1 Taylor series! It gives f(b) = f(a) + (b-a) f'(c) for some c (3) Now what remains is just induction. For an order-2 series, write the order-1 series for f'(c) as a function of f'(b). You'll start to see the pattern. If you really want to put a bow on it, you can assume the order (n-1) series exists with the known formula and prove the order (n) series works out.

repsilat 10y ago

I disagree fairly strongly. Maybe this is reasonable for lower level courses, but in students' third or fourth year of study it seems short-sighted to expect the bulk of their learning to happen in live face-to-face lectures. Requiring them to learn independently, be it from prerecorded lectures or textbooks, allows classes to cover a lot more ground and (importantly) save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. On covering more ground: this isn't just about expecting students to spend "their own time" learning things not covered in class, it's also about more efficiently using their time. With textbooks (and, to a lesser extent, prerecorded lectures) students can learn at their own pace. They can spend more time on the parts that they find difficult without holding up the rest of the class, and they can move more quickly through the material that they understand easily.

jimmaswell 10y ago
>in students' third or fourth year of study it seems short-sighted to expect the bulk of students' learning to happen in live face-to-face lectures. I'm about to graduate a 4-year Computer Science program. It hasn't generally been necessary in any classes so far to get additional information outside the lectures from the textbooks for me, besides in one online class where there were no lectures, or an instance where the specifics of the virtual machine's language you had to write a compiler for were specified in the textbook - written by the teacher, but free digitally from the campus library, so no big objection in that instance aside from that not being mentioned in the syllabus, and that he could've just put all that in the text file where all the lab-section assignments were defined. But back on track, the general learning of the concept of compilation/parsing/etc occurred in class, and you applied it there. Your notes and the task description were enough. >Expecting students to learn independently, be it from prerecorded lectures or textbooks, allows classes to cover a lot more ground and (importantly) save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. Posting the notes online is great and often necessary, as it was in my algorithms class last semester where long algorithm pseudocode was in the notes, but the way the class worked was that everything was explained in-class, with the premade notes plus running trough things on the chalk board, and only what was in the notes was what you were responsible for. It was an effective format. >save lecturer face-time for the task it's actually best suited for: reacting to students' individual needs. People asked questions if they had any, and more explanation would follow, and it wasn't a problem. Taking notes on paper while listening to the lecture in real time has been shown to be very effective compared to alternatives, so using lecture time on that is probably better than leaving any concepts to be learned primarily by textbook reading. >students can learn at their own pace. Lecture notes being posted beforehand, as it was in that algorithms class, works for people who feel they're struggling and need to read over the notes before class, and the notes are always there later if you need to review something. Though, the student will have to resist not writing notes just because the notes are already there - aside from the audio-to-paper process's effectiveness in learning, additional explanation/metaphores/comments will be given, especially in response to questions asked. I've almost never seen it be the case that one person holds up a class with questions everyone else knows the answer to - often many others were wondering the same thing, or the answer adds more even if you thought you already knew everything about that specific point. I also think enforcing a certain pace is good - it's happened that I've read on subjects on my own and forgot parts due to going "too fast," but that's never happened in a college class, so it seems like a tradeoff of classes feeling annoyingly slow sometimes.

jccalhoun 10y ago

So classes on something like British Literature shouldn't have textbooks?

jimmaswell 10y ago
No, I said in the post that those kinds of classes should just use downloads of the material. If some still-copyrighted books are substantially necessary then the college library should get digital copies. Are there cases where a book is substantially necessary to a course like that but publishers refuse to give college libraries digital copies?

thanatropism 10y ago

> I've had lots of classes that worked like this, particularly my Calculus I/II classes where there was a textbook but homework from it was just suggested, not collected, and the lectures were entirely sufficient to understand the material and do well on the exams. I'm guessing the exams were easy but you didn't learn much calculus.

jimmaswell 10y ago
I definitely learned calculus from the Calculus classes. I took calculus 3 recently for credits with no difficulty remembering anything relevant from 1/2. Some things I could give right now off the top of my head are the definition of an integral/derivative, squeeze theorem, mean value theorem, integration by parts, epsilon delta definition of a limit, second/third derivative tests, and a lot more. Test me with something if you want.
- thanatropism 10y ago
  So what's the basic idea behind Taylor series? (A "proof sketch", or even a sequence of theorems relying on each other building up to the lightbulb step.)
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    If OP doesn't reply, can you? I'd like any insight I can :-)
    - thanatropism 10y ago
      (1) Rolle's theorem says that if f(x) if differentiable in the interval (a,b) and f(a)=f(b), there must be a point c such that f'(c) = 0. Proving this one uses maths that, although simple, more analysis-like than calculus-like, but it should be intuitive if you try to draw a function with f(a)=f(b). It has to come up and down so it has a point where it has a horizontal tangent. (2) The Mean Value Theorem is like Rolle's theorem, but "tilting" or "rotating" your function, so that if f(b) = r(f(b)-f(a)) then there's a point c with f'(c) = r. And this is already an order 1 Taylor series! It gives f(b) = f(a) + (b-a) f'(c) for some c (3) Now what remains is just induction. For an order-2 series, write the order-1 series for f'(c) as a function of f'(b). You'll start to see the pattern. If you really want to put a bow on it, you can assume the order (n-1) series exists with the known formula and prove the order (n) series works out.