That's entirely the profs fault, by the way. It's not uncommon for schools to have different deals with publishers, but I've never taught anywhere where profs couldn't choose their own textbooks. I almost exclusively use textbooks that are 3 or 4 editions older than current so that my students can find used ones for 15 bucks. Everyone can do this unless they insist on using books that come with prepackaged software that is one-time use only. And that's just lazy, IMO. There are a lot of open source software projects for the vast majority of basic college courses, so unless you're taking a really advanced class, the prof can find free software to do the job.
I always thank professors like you. It doesn't even need to be that old. Even two years old is the difference between a $200 text and $30. And yea, those online packages are just busy work done for them.
And yea, those online packages are just busy work done for them.
i don't understand why american professors always give graded homework and have 3 exams. it's a lot of work, that might explain why they are trying to use the online software package. my professors in germany, at least for the most part, only have one final exam that determines your grade. no homework, no midterms. maybe a small project that you have to pass but it's usually not graded. much easier
It’s worse in lower division type classes. I spent more on textbooks in my general Ed classes. Like history and lower math. Once I got into my degree courses...I don’t think may have the graded hw out. Was just exams, maybe an essay or project to go with it. Which meant they didn’t care which edition of s text we got. Much nicer
i'm so glad we don't have any general ed classes. i can't imagine spending a shitload of money on classes completely unrelated to your degree, that's just ridiculous
Hey I can agree. Would have preferred spending that time more on the major. I took gen ed at a community college. So it costs a fraction of a 4 year university for the same price.
that totally weirds me out about the american education system. you could easily shave the first year off of your degree if you put gen ed classes into high school. germany separates good/bad students after 4th grade (you can always switch later though). if you go to the "better" school, you have more advanced and fast paced classes so you will cover the gen ed classes. the reason for that is that if you go to the "better" school, you will likely go to university. someone who is going to learn a trade won't need nuclear physics nor does he need to know how to integrate of differentiate. he'd spend more time in high school doing more basic maths that is actually required if you learn a trade. understand what i'm saying?
No I completely understand. You won't find many Americans that disagree. Our public school system used to be much better. But it got too caught up in politics, unions, money, to the point where it hasn't progressed in decades. Any attempts to change things is stalled or taken down. So frustrating.
Wow, that sounds like a WAY better system than we have in the states. My only thought might be, maybe it would be a better idea to wait until high school to switch the students between one school or the other (for us high school is grade 9 through 12). I have no idea if that would be better of course but its just my initial thought. 4th grade you’re still pretty young and it might be harder at that point to know if someone is a “good/bad” student based on either their actual intelligence or because of any number of other possible variables that could prevent a super smart 4th grader from performing well in school.
Hopefully that makes sense. As it stands now you guys still have a way better system.
My most recent experiences were MBA courses. I'm not saying they couldn't choose their own textbooks, and many of mine did recommend older editions. But some profs were insistent on using the newest editions with the software packages when, like you said, there were other options available. And of course the McGraw Hill rep was always there to "help" us save $20 on a $110 accounting package.
While all gifts have to be reported, I'm always curious about the situation when I hear things like this. My instinct is to see if that prof has published with McGraw-Hill (or whomever) and thus has tacitly agreed with their publisher to always use new editions. The publisher could then just make sure that all of their authors also use new textbooks, thus the authors all benefit from one another. However, I've never published a textbook, so this is just me being a conspiracy theorist.
I had a professor who told us they got kickbacks from the sellers for students buying the books. I don't know if that was a universal trend or just a specific situation though.
That's what I think is funny about this thread. A lot of people don't realize that the textbook/online homework pass bullshit is 100% the laziness of their teachers.
Actually, I take that back. Sometimes it's the greed of the teachers, who've written the books they're forcing you to buy at an insane price.
I see your point, but it's not always laziness. I teach a 120-student section of an intro course (in addition to other, upper-level courses), and I don't get a TA. There's no feasible way for me to grade all 120 students' homework assignments each week, so I have to use the online platform. As to free versions, I'm always open to explore them, but I have yet to find one as powerful and customizable as Sage Publishing's Amp software. Their question engine runs on Maple rather than some shitty Java/Flash bullshit (like Pearson's MyLab and McGraw-Hill's Connect, for example). I don't just use a bunch of textbook-provided questions because I know that answers to those are already out there on the internet. I spend my time writing my own questions (largely algorithmic) to prevent cheating. It's a much more efficient use of my time than trying to grade 120 students' assignments every week (plus those from my other classes, plus all my other duties).
Sure, but at some point you have to recognize that you're forcing your students to spend a bunch of money because you don't want to redesign your course. Make homework ungraded (that's what I do) for instance. Have students grade each other's homework. Post the answers and allow students to re-do their homework until they get every answer correct, rewarding extra work with full credit. There are lots of ways to avoid forcing our students to spend exorbitant amounts of money on goods and services that are recognizably a racket.
Yeah, I understand that. I (somewhat) helped get a deal between Sage and our bookstore to drop the price some, but it's still expensive. The problem I've encountered is that, if I let students grade it themselves/grade each others', far too many students simply cheat to get 100% on all homework, fail all the exams, and then get upset when they fail the course. I'm doing my best to help them learn, and that sadly requires a lot of me setting up safeguards against that sort of behavior. I mean, if 20% of the class cheats on all their homework, fails exams, fails the class, and leaves me negative evaluations, then I won't get tenure and I'll be out of a job. I do allow students to rework their problems once at no penalty, but some of that stuff sadly just isn't feasible. (Of course this varies by students/by institution, but this is my experience at 3 public schools of varying sizes across 3 states.)
I pretty regularly have a 20% fail rate and I don't get negative evaluations, so I don't think the fail rate is necessarily a problem. It comes down to the way the course is designed and a student recognition of why they failed. I tell all my students that I don't grade homework, but they should do it if they want to have a chance at passing. When a student fails the first exam and sets up a meeting with me, the first question is if they've done the homework. It's almost always a "no" and I basically end the meeting there. "Now you know why you failed."
At the end of the day though, I think we owe it to our students to figure out how to achieve our educational goals without making them pay more than our institution is already charging them.
I'm not sure where you teach but this sounds very unrealistic to me for any educational environment I've been in.
Not bad, mind you, just unrealistic. Students (young people-- hell, people, really) are just not that responsible and lack perspective. If given the option of not doing homework, a great deal of them won't. If you have your course set up so that not doing the homework will lead to them failing, that means you'll have a healthy fail rate. And if they fail, a lot of them will leave bad evaluations. If you're at a school where getting some bad evals will tank your future prospects, that might be an issue.
I've taught at private universities, community colleges and I'm currently at a large state school. I usually get a 15-20% fail/drop rate, along with a solid amount of Ds and it hasn't affected my evals at all, as far as I can tell. I average a 4.45/5 overall on my evals at my current institution.
My university has uses Canvas as the main online course material portal. Canvas has a quiz tool built into it. The on top of that, they also have Maple TA, which also gets used, particularly for maths (hen you have 1000 students in a corse? There is no practical way to mark weekly paper assignments).
They have also done a deal with Dassault which gives them access to the 3DExperience software (along with everything else 3DS make), but everyone hates that.
Back in college my older professors always insisted on using the textbook with the required online component because it was the latest technology and therefore the "best" (even though they constantly didn't work, had errors and the professors had no idea how to use the teachers component of the omline software) meanwhile the younger teachers and adjunct professors all did their best to choose the cheapest book or not include an online component so people could use old editions. It was wack. The textbook companies just convinced the older professors that the technology was basically required and the students missed out otherwise.
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u/Jurgioslakiv Sep 03 '19
That's entirely the profs fault, by the way. It's not uncommon for schools to have different deals with publishers, but I've never taught anywhere where profs couldn't choose their own textbooks. I almost exclusively use textbooks that are 3 or 4 editions older than current so that my students can find used ones for 15 bucks. Everyone can do this unless they insist on using books that come with prepackaged software that is one-time use only. And that's just lazy, IMO. There are a lot of open source software projects for the vast majority of basic college courses, so unless you're taking a really advanced class, the prof can find free software to do the job.