“No, This Class Doesn’t Have A Textbook”
By Rich Russell
As an adjunct professor, I don’t always have the “privilege” of being able to choose my own textbook. If one is assigned for a course — whether that’s by me or by the college — I feel obligated to use it as much as possible. I don’t care for professors who list “required textbooks” in their syllabi, expensive tomes with online content and not-sold-separately course software, that the students dutifully purchase, only for the trusting scholars to discover, at the end of the semester, that the professor hasn’t referenced the books (let alone the online fare) at all.
To be clear: for most classes, I do still like having at least one “old-school” textbook, one common reader we can use a starting point, to be supplemented, of course, by more up-to-the-minute online articles, videos, and so forth, that I keep in a personal archive of materials and/or that students recommend.
This past spring, I taught a section of face-to-face Creative Writing II; as always, I did assign a textbook, one which had been recommended by a friend and which she had used in previous semesters, so there were used copies available in the bookstore. Halfway through
Short URL: http://www.adjunctnation.com/?p=2365
Sam, I think you’ll like my next post –– look for it soon!
In this technology age books serve many purposes. Certain people like the feel of flipping pages while more and more people are using ipads or other devices to read books via apps.
Online teaching is the future! It takes less time traveling. You don’t need classrooms, it’s cheaper and everyone is in his/her own environment. The only problem is the social aspect of less meeting each other in real life…