In Florida this is driven by the Textbook Affordability Act, which produced the Board of Governors guidelines on textbook adoption (8.003)
Among other things, these guidelines state the following: (c) A determination by the course instructor or academic department offering the course, before a textbook is adopted, of the extent to which a new edition differs significantly and substantively from earlier versions and the value of changing to a new edition. These are the same guidelines that lead to the posting of the ISBN numbers for all textbooks on a central university web site to enable students to purchase the correct books from the least expensive source they can find. I have a PDF of these guidelines (as well as an early draft of the act with much of this language). Contact me off list if you'd like a copy of either. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 – 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 [email protected] CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Bourgeois, Dr. Martin <[email protected]>wrote: > In order to keep the cost of textbooks down, our administration is > considering adoption of a policy that requires faculty to justify why we > would change a text, either to a new edition or a different book. It's not > clear to me who we would justify it to- the bookstore? The administration? A > newly formed committee on textbook appropriateness? Needless to say, faculty > are not behind this proposed change. I'm curious to hear a) whether other > institutions have similar policies and b) how others on the list feel about > this. > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d550&n=T&l=tips&o=3982 > or send a blank email to > leave-3982-13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=3994 or send a blank email to leave-3994-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
