I have talked about this in the past so most tipsters know where I stand on this. As a mom of college students (I just graduated the last one! Yeah!) I am hyperaware of textbook costs and nowhere is it more rampant than in business classes. My accounting major son had to pay nearly $400 for a tax accounting text! It had to be new each year to accommodate new tax laws and could never be sold and was obsolete by the next year!
I like using a bare bones book and supplement with readings that I like. Since I like to focus on refuting misconceptions, my readings, about 2-4 per chapter, are on eReserves for students to read or download, as they desire. I am using a different book right now because I'm doing research on intro psych pedagogies and wanted a more 'mainstream' text; but (apologies to author on this list), I will be going back to the bare bones book after the study is done. It costs about $15. There are several out there but I use the Barron book (Psychology the Easy Way) that is written by a tipster. Here is how I see it: Most texts have the stupidest pictures in them that have NO pedagogical value; I mean, I love graphs and a picture that might really illustrate a concept--which is rare. Most of the pictures in textbooks are so generic that they could be illustrating any concept depending on where you insert them into the text. That is a good part of what students pay for with texts--all the copyright costs on all the fancy pictures that illustrate nothing in particular. And I know from conversations with authors that they don't always have a whole lot of say in which pictures are included. So, by picking a book that is complete in terms of the essential information, devoid of pictures (leaving in some graphs as illustrations), and devoid of that particular author's slant on what should be included in a chapter to illustrate or provide more depth or breadth or both, based on THAT AUTHOR's opinion of what is important to achieve this, is just not how I want to teach. It may be good for beginning instructors...the Myers text for example, very complete but with stuff that I don't see as quite that necessary or that makes a point that I would like to make with the chapter. So my students only need to spend for the cheap text and after that it's their call to print or not to print the supplemental primary readings--which range from newspaper articles, to Newsweek type articles, to Scientific American type articles to regular professional journal articles or book chapters. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 tay...@sandiego.edu ________________________________________ From: Paul C Bernhardt [pcbernha...@frostburg.edu] Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2010 8:23 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Warning: Rant: $180!!!!! Excuse this rant. I know it isn't news, but textbook prices are out of control. Out of curiosity, I checked at the bookstore for how much my students will have to pay for a copy of the text I've selected for one of my courses. $180.00 (new) That's not right. It is also about $50 more than I thought students would suffer for it (which is still too much). They can get it for just under $140 on Amazon and Textbooks.com. I'm still appalled. Looking at the books for the other classes I'm teaching.. $174.00 For another class in which I'm using trade paperbacks, $23 and $17 (two books required, prices for new copies). No issue with those prices, of course. But, it puts the textbook prices in sharp contrast: is a textbook really something that requires between 6 and 10 times the price? I think it is (past) time for faculty to assert the control we have over this process. I am going to pick a new book for I/O for the Spring. I will make sure that I specify that students can use previous editions of the book. I know the publishers try to pull the old editions out of circulation, but they are still out there and do cost a lot less. When I teach the class requiring the $174 book next fall I'm going to allow the previous edition. You may recall my describing that I was not going to allow the previous edition for this book a few months back. But, with publishers selling individual chapters to students, they will spend much less to buy a new copy of the previous edition and simply buy that chapter from the publisher for an inflated price. For the stats class with the $180 book, same thing, but there is also a possibility to use Wikibooks. A fully developed stats book sits there. Whether it can be used for a behavior sciences stats course is another question. Flatworldknowledge.com is another model by which students can get free and greatly reduced price textbooks, though no stats book there, yet. How many of us check how much students get charged for the books we require? What solutions are we seeking? What more can we do? Paul C. Bernhardt Department of Psychology Frostburg State University Frostburg, Maryland --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=4351 or send a blank email to leave-4351-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
