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I teach mathematics at a community college. The content I cover has a very slow rate of change. There is no valid educational reason for textbooks to cost so
by skh 8y ago
I teach mathematics at a community college. The content I cover has a very slow rate of change. There is no valid educational reason for textbooks to cost so much in my area or to change from year to year. I decided some years ago stop using paid materials on my courses.
I create most of the content myself. I have my own problem sets with solutions and create almost all of my own lectures. It was a lot of work to get everything to the point of being able to stop using paid materials but the up front work pays dividends in making my job a lot easier now.
I don’t know how feasible this is for other areas but in mathematics it is. The problem with open textbooks that I’ve seen is that they tend not to be done well. I’ve found a few open textbooks in math that are very well done. The nice thing is that when you find one that is done well you won’t ever have change books.
- yorwba 8y ago> I’ve found a few open textbooks in math that are very well done. Do you have links?
- patentnumber100 8y agoBook of Proof by Richard Hammack: https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/ https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/
- skh 8y agoFor college algebra and precalculus: http://www.stitz-zeager.com http://www.stitz-zeager.com For calc 1 - 3: http://www.apexcalculus.com http://www.apexcalculus.com I did find one really good intermediate algebra book but can’t find the website.
- nickysielicki 8y agoUniversity of Wisconsin Calculus 1/2/3 textbooks, GNU public licensed. https://github.com/fabiohenriquecn/wisconsin-calculus https://github.com/fabiohenriquecn/wisconsin-calculus edit: I guess as of this semester these are no longer being used in classes, they've moved to the online homework / $300 textbook model.
- jbp 8y agoList by a Math professor: http://people.math.gatech.edu/%7Ecain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html http://people.math.gatech.edu/%7Ecain/textbooks/onlinebooks....
- antjanus 8y agoI had a community college math teacher who was really pissed at textbook requirements set for her class. It wasn't a choice she could really make (ie. demand which textbook to use). So, when she taught me for a 2nd semester, she decided that we could use our old books. And kept it that way. We compared problems from old and new textbooks and the VAST majority of differences were differences for the sake of differences. eg. sally bought 5 peaches instead of 3 in the new edition.
- zdragnar 8y agoI always assumed that was to get around the fact that so many students will try to cheat their way through school. I contemplated joining a few clubs in college, and several of them let slip that they have archives of homework other members had donated from previous years.
- Johnny555 8y agoIf you cheat on your homework by copying it from a previous year, yet you also manage to do good enough on exams that you can pass the course, then maybe you didn't really need to do the homework. On the other hand, if you're really stuck on a problem, seeing someone else's work can help unblock you to solve the rest of the problem, so homework archives aren't all bad.