My point is that extended writing on the board should be avoided and replaced with slides, preferably PowerPoint – animated / multimedia (but not too multimedia as that takes the attention away from the course) where applicable. It keeps the students awake, they make the course more interesting and if the slides are printed out (or on the web the day before), the students don’t need to write very much and can concentrate on listening. I have in the past attended lectures where I was so busy copying notes from the board that I hardly knew what the topic was.

I got interested and looked around:
1) Some lecturers are looking into this. The link is too long, but search for this article in google: “Student Perspectives: Expectations of Multimedia Technology in a College Literature Class.”

2) Simple and neat, saving writing on the board:
http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/cmorris/
http://people.sinclair.edu/maryclifford/literature/literature.pdf

Yes, this is all public domain books. The catch is that it is excerpts for the most part. That’s where I got my first glitch. I didn’t know what parts I needed. There is very little on the part of the authors on historical background. In fact I get more on the Internet. The introduction to each section is on the CD so I could put it all on a reading device. In fact the CD is better than the book. The CD also has pictures, sound bites, suggestions for future research and supplemental reading. The book site online has more information, quizzes, etc. The instructor has yet to refer to the CD. This course is simply a second year community college course. There are no slides, the instructor writes on the chalkboard. He also likes to separate us into little discussion groups. I don’t know if the text is all that necessary other than it is directed by school policy. Students must buy the book to be in class. He does make references to passages, but not that much. Maybe twice in a class period. This may change as the course progresses. As far as exams go, I doubt if they are open book so I could still get along with using let’s say my REB1200. I find the lack of multimedia shocking and it makes for a boring class. I am just taking it for the fun of it and to experiment. That’s why I am now complaining about the workload since I am disappointed about my failing experiment. I think I will try a pop literature ot Black literature course next. One that students must read the entire book.

Hi Ellen,
Reselling textbooks is one of the reason the textbook world is so broken. Publishers know they’ll only be able to sell a few copies–which will then be re-used multiple times. So they have to set a high price to cover their fixed costs. The higher the price, the more they’re re-sold. A vicious circle.

Yes, eTextbooks should be cheaper. As you note, though, a lot of your Lit class is available in public domain books. An instructor could simply suggest Gutenberg/Manybooks.

Rob,

The instructor is one of those people that loves the smell of old books. The way he even touches his book lets me know that he would rather die than read an e-book.

Ellen

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

So, Ellen–what are you reading in this course?

We started off with early explorers like De Vaca, then John Smith, and John Winthrop. This week some Puritan narratives. Soon we’ll start on the the South.

Ellen

I am surprised. I provided pretty full notes in the form of PowerPoint slides, making it optional for the students which books to read. I would have expected this to be common today.

Jorgen,
A literature class can’t proceed on the basis of Power Point slides and optional readings. That would kind of defeat the purpose of the class.

Additionally, students are often required to read from a specific editions of printed books so that page and line number references are uniform—so that everybody is on the same page.

I seriously doubt that Ellen’s textbook is just a collection of public-domain text streams. Any decent academic textbook contains background material, illustrations, analyses, further reading references, and study guidance material. E-books don’t even come close to matching this kind of package, and won’t for some time to come.

E-books have their purposes, but the cases in which they supplant printed books are far fewer and further between than some realize.

Yes, eTextbooks should be cheaper. As you note, though, a lot of your Lit class is available in public domain books. An instructor could simply suggest Gutenberg/Manybooks.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com