BY JONATHAN REES
Way back when I was new to teaching I got into an argument with my then-department chairman about the textbook to assign in my American history survey course. I had my choice. He had a choice that he thought we should all assign because it was “the leading textbook in the field.” I hated that textbook because I thought it was too political, when I was much more interested in emphasizing social and economic history. To make a long story short, after a lot of hassle, I got to pick my own textbook. As a result, I’m kind of sensitive about this particular topic.
It’s a good thing I did win that particular argument because since that time I’ve switched textbooks multiple times, dropped them entirely, restored a new digital textbook (that isn’t really a textbook – another long story) when I took my survey class online, and reserve the right to change my mind again should something interesting catch my interest. Indeed, as textbooks have changed, the question of who gets to pick them has slowly been raised whether faculty recognize this or not. Just to pick one of many possible examples, consider this:
Perlego gives users access to a library of content, including digital textbooks. The physical copy of each of those books would have cost him about $50 on Amazon, far more expensive than the cost of his Perlego student subscription, about $15 a month. The service has a premium version that costs about $20 a month.
Perlego officially launched in January 2017, and raised almost $700,000 for its seed funding round last year. So far the company has won participation by major textbook publishers, including Palgrave, Wiley and Pearson. And it’s currently in the process of closing an agreement with McGraw-Hill. Non-textbook publishers it works with include Atlantic Books and Greenleaf Book Group…
Gauthier Van Malderen, Perlego’s founder, says his company currently is involved with pilots in 12 universities.
The key word in that long quotation is “universities.” They’re phoning administrators to get in the door, the the administrators will have to find some way to entice faculty to actually assign the textbooks to which Perlego has the rights.
These kinds of arrangements aren’t new. Way back in my serious blogging days, I got into an intense online discussion with the CEO of an e-textbook startup called Courseload that struck a major deal with Indiana University for e-texts. After considering all his points, I wrote this:
What bothers me the most though about Courseload’s business model is that it’s aimed primarily at administrations rather than individual professors. Yes, individual professors can opt-in or decline at IU…for now…but what happens when someone’s dean tells an untenured or adjunct faculty member that they should use Courseload because it saves their students money (which the administration can then make them spend on higher tuition rather than the other costs of life)? There’s voluntary and then there’s the appearance of voluntary. I am simply not comfortable with anyone other than faculty having any role in book adoption decisions. Period.
I still feel that way. From what I can tell, IU has cut Courseload out of the picture and is striking deals directly with publishers. That bothers me too. If faculty want to assign e-textbooks, then that’s great. But if they have an educational rationale to stick with paper, then that should be their choice too. They shouldn’t be pressured to pick cheaper books if they don’t suit their educational needs.
Today’s major trend in saving money on textbooks is, of corse, Open Educational Resources (or OER). I think OER is terrific. I personally believe that any textbook that retails for more than $100 is an abomination, and some of the cheaper ones aren’t much better. If there’s an open source version of any textbook that you use which happens to meet your needs, then you should definitely assign it. If there isn’t, then you should consider writing one yourself.
However, nobody should force any professor to assign any textbook, whether it’s open source or not. The format of your textbook affects how you teach. To a great degree, the contents of your textbook determine what content you teach. The choice of what content you teach determines so much more – everything from the politics of your classroom to how much you enjoy your job.
Everybody with half a brain in their head thinks that the cost of textbooks is a huge problem. If they don’t, they’ll probably run out of students sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, if student textbook cost savings are all being eaten up by higher tuition, then what’s the point of stepping on one of the faculty’s most important prerogatives to get to that point? That’s why faculty need to be intimately involved in all these e-textbook initiatives, especially the ones involving private companies. If you’re going to create an e-textbook initiative on your campus (and you should), then structuring it as an equal partnership between administrators and faculty will greatly increase its chance to succeed.
Yes, it’s good to keep up with the times. However, if faculty don’t have a huge influence over what the future of teaching looks like online and over how online tools are used in face-to-face classes, then that future is likely to be a step backwards in more ways than one.
Once upon a time, at least where I was a full-time member of a faculty once upon a time, the principal textbook for a multi-section course (usually Intro or Survey) was chosen by consensus of the full-time faculty who taught that course, with the option for individually chosen supplementary texts. I thought that was a good idea: students in any section got the same essential course as students in any other section, and students who for one reason or another switched sections didn’t need to get a new set of textbooks; furthermore, the discussions among faculty meant that there was departmental consensus on the coverage and purpose of the multi-section course within the larger curriculum. And the (once upon a time) few part-time faculty hired to cover extra sections could step into the department culture by way of the common text. Texts for upper-level courses were of course chosen by the faculty members teaching them.
Two things changed: in many departments multi-section courses are where part-time faculty are concentrated, and textbooks have become more and more and more expensive even as they become more and more and more similar (at least in my field). E-books, although less likely to be read by students or deeply understood by those who do read them (according to at least some of the research I’ve been reading), have been taking over because of their lower price-tag (I won’t necessarily say lower “cost,” all things considered). With a perpetually changing faculty, then, metastasis of available texts, and consequently shorter time to review possible text choices, e-publishers cutting deals with administrators get more and more traction.
As this phenomenon reaches beyond Intro courses into the rest of the departmental course offerings, I would imagine maintaining coherence in a departmental program or major is increasingly difficult. (I’m not talking about diversity, variety, or experimentation here; I mean a department that has agreed on what it’s doing and why.) Eventually the question may become “what’s a major, anyway?”…or “what’s a department?”
I agree with you, Jonathan, that faculty must retain, or reclaim, the right and responsibility for text selection, because the text is the groundwork of the course and determines what can be built on it. I certainly haven’t met many administrators qualified to make such choices. Still, I’m afraid that, at least at the Introductory level, for factors I’ve mentioned and others, we won’t be able to succeed in the long run.
(I ceased to be a full-time member of a faculty when we struck against a contract that, among other offenses, asserted as a Management Right the right to “assign teaching methods and materials.” Since the teaching staff at that school is now around 90% part-time, I believe, it’s probable that nobody is fighting many battles there anymore.)
Important and sobering comment. These issues were addressed by Committee A in a brief statement issued in November 2013 entitled “The Freedom to Teach.” It reads:
“The freedom to teach includes the right of the faculty to select the materials, determine the approach to the subject, make the assignments, and assess student academic performance in teaching activities for which faculty members are individually responsible, without having their decisions subject to the veto of a department chair, dean, or other administrative officer. Teaching duties that are commonly shared among a number of faculty members require a significant amount of coordination and the imposition of a certain degree of structure, often involving a need for agreement on such matters as general course content, syllabi, and examinations.1
“In a multisection course taught by several faculty members, responsibility is often shared among the instructors for identifying the texts to be assigned to students. Common course syllabi and examinations are also typical but should not be imposed by departmental or administrative fiat. The shared responsibility bespeaks a shared freedom, which trumps the freedom of an individual faculty member to assign a textbook that he or she alone considers satisfactory. The individual’s freedom in other respects, however, remains undiluted. Individuals should be able to assign supplementary materials to deal with subjects that they believe are inadequately treated in the required textbook. Instructors also have the right to discuss in the classroom what they see as deficiencies in the textbook; doing so could turn out to be as effective in engaging the students as requiring them to use an alternate textbook. These principles apply equally to faculty in the tenure system and those with contingent appointments. Although, under these circumstances, the decisions of the group may prevail over the dissenting position of a particular individual, the deliberations leading to such decisions ought to involve substantial reflection and discussion by all those who teach the courses. The department should have a process for periodically reviewing curricular decisions and altering them based on a consensus of the appropriate teaching faculty, subject to review at other levels of governance.
Note
1. Substantially the same paragraph appears in “Academic Freedom in the Medical School” (AAUP, Policy Documents and Reports, 11th ed. [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015], 71– 72).
I, of course, agree entirely with Jonathan’s argument in this post. There is also an interesting treatment of open source publishing by Joe Moxley, “Open Textbook Publishing,” in the Sept.-Oct. 2013 issue of Academe, which can be found here: https://www.aaup.org/article/open-textbook-publishing#.W0UAr8InZAg
I taught in an online program where the administration made a deal with a publisher for e-books for most of the courses that were INCLUDED in the tuition for the course. Students had instant access to the textbook as soon as the course began. Faculty had not input whatsoever, but it may not have mattered. It was obvious to me from the work submitted in my class that a substantial number of students were not reading the book. The arrangement was meant to correct the problem of assigning an expensive textbook that students did not buy and thus did not read. But apparently the cost was not the only issue affecting student completion of reading assignments.
There’s a simple solution to the textbook problem. Don’t use them. I use monographs, articles, videos, etc.