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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?"
The professor goes into a bookstore and picks the most expensive textbook on the shelf, and dealing with the on-campus bookstore just adds salt onto the wounds.
For example, I was recently involved in moving our entry-level CS classes from C++ to Java, and helping the instructors get themselves set up. What to use? As a Java hacker, my gut said: just use lecture notes etc. But wiser heads prevailed. Eventually we went with Lewis and Loftus, which besides being well constructed for its task (teaching elementary computer science in Java) has a massive amount of support materials. We could not possibly match that in quality. Yes, it's $70 on Amazon. You can get it cheaper tho. And it's worth it: we use it for three classes in a row.
What book to use for your JavaScript class? That I can't say, though O'Reilly's book is actually not horrible. But that's my hacker instinct firing off again...
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.
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.