3 ms·
>> "Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free
by gamble 17y ago
>> "Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online."
Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial.
I'd recommend to anyone that if they don't like the text their class is using, find another one and just photocopy the problem sets from the library's copy if you need them. There's an excellent text available for almost every subject, if you look for it.
- Avshalom 17y ago>> "Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial." For two reasons at least. One: the amount of effort that goes into a good text and Two it means that every one taking the class from a different teacher is either getting taught something different or being taught from some one else's notes. Same with anytime a new teacher takes over the subject. A couple years of this and suddlenly people are being taught with error ridden cryptic notes from a teacher who retired years ago but the course material is now so different than the text book that upper level classes relying on what you learned from the teachers notes would need to be restructured so you can change the low level course. which is exactly what happened at my school, NMT, with the sophomore level physics courses and it's been a 4 year head ache so far. All of which to say is that the text book industry sucks, not necessarily the text books themselves.