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How Would You Select a Textbook?
benj_e asks: "I'm thinking about doing some adjunct teaching at a couple of local community colleges, and have the opportunity to choose the textbook for an online JavaScript class. In the training classes I've given in the corporate world, I didn't have the need to select a text - there were no textbooks for the software I was teaching students to use aside from the manual. I'm pretty sure I want something with WebCT or Blackboard content, but other than that I'm, well, clueless. So, for all you educators out there - how do you go about selecting a textbook? What goes into your decision making process?"
Have them buy an approrpaite reference, like an O'Reilly book, and use that. Then make notes that replicate what you would have done if you were teaching one person, use overheads from that.
Perhaps because most browsers don't support languages like Smalltalk (!) and Tcl (!)?
the layman's guide to computer science
"Look at what other respected professors use (at other universities) and evaluate those options. They have massive resources at their disposal, so they should have made a good choice. You can then choose what best suits your particular teaching style." I'd be careful about this, while sometimes this is the case, other times the selection of a textbook for a course is more of a political matter. Textbooks are big business at the university level.
Bah! The parent is NOT insightful. If the professor wrote a book about the subject they are teaching, it would be absurd to use a different book. In fact, such books are generally developed from the course notes that the professor developed for teaching that very course.
So what does this mean? Sure, YOU might not agree that the book is the best one, but it is clearly the one the professor feels is best. That doesn't have to be about money at all. (it's more about tenure...)
If you have the time, I would try to read as many as possible and then simply select the one you think is the best.
This will also benefit you in that it may give you ideas for your class, and conversely, if you know what your general curriculum will be already then you can simply see what book matches best with that.
Armchairgenius.com - Where everyone is a genius.
For the class the poster is teaching, that makes sense. In general, however, the O'Reilly books are very specific (how to use this one piece of software) and are either reference books or very introductory material. It's not a big deal for the majority of classes, I'm sure, but the O'Reilly books teach programming as a tool instead of a science.
True story.
I've been teaching at the college level for many years. Recently it has become true that ...
1. Textbooks are all the same.
2. They are outrageously expensive.
You lean like bandits on the megapublishers to lower prices, or...
You write up your own notes.
I worked for a couple of years at a small university and being new to teaching, but somewhat of a versed IT pro, I decided to be very idealistic about picking textbooks. I think it is *very* important to read what you are choosing to teach from before you decide. Don't just assume that the book from the last time the course was taught will be *good enough*!!
That being said, there is another important factor when choosing books. Make sure there are adequate exercises/test questions to go along with a book. I decided to teach a course on a programming language not necessarily popular with most academics (Perl), and I evaluated the few textbooks available. I felt that none were adequate and decided to teach out of one of my favorite books. It was the worst teaching experience I had. It is nearly impossible to create unambiguous questions for tests and creating exercises that are challenging while still short enough to be small assignments is another task I was not prepared to handle. Students need to learn one concept at a time and they need to do a few exercises to get the hang of each new concept. If you throw all the information at them and expect them to accomplish one large task, then many otherwise bright students will be overwhelmed and will not perform as well as they would like. Then, when the time comes, they will let you know using the all-powerful course evaluation that they were not happy with the course. Many people (especially students) do not realize how much goes into creating a textbook. If it were really a great scam to take money from students, then textbook authors and publishers would be huge, rich companies. Quite a bit of time is spent on the exercises and teaching resources involved in the book. In my estimation, I would say that more time is spent in the external content than is spent on what the student receives.
When reviewing a textbook, start checking at the end: a book without a *very* extensive index (10 pages at least) had better be used as fuel for a fire.