Random Ranting: Digital Textbooks, practical for college?

[fashion_piranha]

There’s been a lot of talk about moving to digital textbooks. In some classes - like my accounting class - the transition has already begun.   The original textbook Accounting Principles is divided into the separate sections - since the accounting sequence is three classes - and each piece is sold separately for $50. Instead of a hefty ten pound

Comments

[kiri_l]

There are some textbooks* which I have which have proved valuable through the years. The do mostly collect dust but when you need them - they are there. The "access only during that term" thing bothers me greatly. some courses you do need that information later.

Ok so it's is like 5 books.. but they are really helpful ones.

[fashion_piranha]

A lot of it probably depends a great deal on the field. For example, my major of art history? There are new discoveries in the field and opinions change, but generally we're talking about a fairly static body of work. daVinci isn't making new works, after all. So a lot of the reference books I have now will probably still be useable in ten, twenty years.

But look at a field like astronomy. My dad got his BA and Master's in astronomy in the late 60s-early 70s, but so much has happened in that field since then that when I took a basic intro class to the solar system a year or two ago, he couldn't help me on a lot of my homework because he didn't know the answers.
So his textbooks? Pretty freakin' useless.

But yeah, the thing irks me the most is definitely the limited ownership of the text.

[morningapproach]

Being a (former) english major, my textbooks weren't so much of a waste. I don't think that essays, theories, or books ever go out of date. There have been quite a few of my lit theory books and essays I have gone back to for other courses (Saussure comes to mind) and even for academic debates with friends. And other than that, the box of them works wonders for propping the door open when we are moving :D

I would be mighty pissed if I had to buy those books :P we had a packet of that sort while I was doing my Bachelor of Education with selections that the teachers chose for each week of the course, and that was quite annoying because we couldn't sell that back.

[jeeperstseepers]

This is an interesting post. It's nice to see the student's perspective about this

[fashion_piranha]

It's good to hear a professor's side of things! In some classes it's clear the teachers have thought about how the cost of books will affect the students; in others the teachers don't seem to know or care what the books cost!

I'm sure the paper quality must vary with publisher, just like with regular textbooks. This particular company *seems* like they're trying to push into an all-digital arena, and the print textbooks really seem like an afterthought, which probably accounts for some of the crumminess. Does the psych book you use have on-line resources that you also use?

Most of my textbooks now seem to come with cards/flyers/etc. for some sort of extra online media, but the accounting class is the first one I've had that actually used the materials.

[forever_meg]

I only graduated in 2008 but my college hadn't even started to switch over. We did have links to websites, but only in language classes. I've actually been using a substantial number of books from a few of my classes, though. Since I did both medieval literature and history, those books have proved useful for my MA dissertation this year. Of course, if I hadn't continued in a medievalist direction they wouldn't have been as useful, but I'm glad to have my own copies of Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte d'Arthur!

Then again, I also have an expensive astronomy textbook that will never go anywhere, so I guess it's a mixed bag. I think I'd prefer to have the book and be able to sell it back.

[ashton_blaze]

hey, maybe with the digital editions they can fix in real time the errors that are found after publishing

[fashion_piranha]

I almost never buy current edition textbooks for exactly this reason! I had something similar happen - I was using a 4th edition of a textbook and the class was supposed to use the 6th - but the only difference was the 6th edition had color images and text and mine had black and white! SO LAME!!

In an English class, I had an older edition and it turned out about 1/4 of the articles had been switched out for new ones. So if a teacher assigned three readings, there was a chance that one of them wouldn't be in the book. "Aw man, " I thought "I'm going to have to get the new edition."
OR NOT. It turns out that every single one of the 'new' articles were also available on the internet, for free!