Wiki Textbooks 3
How Will We Know What to Accept as True?
I suppose we can have confidence in the currency and accuracy of information in students' wikitexts to the extent that instructors serve as the final arbiters--and to the extent that the instructors themselves are credible as authorities in the subject. In this context a wiki textbook is a hermetic product, no different, really, from the unique pedagogical dynamics of the classroom in which a particular instructor and his or her students perform their rituals and epiphanies. But what about online textbooks produced this way that are thrown out to the world? What is the authorship? Can we have confidence that the content is correct and that the ethics of authorship are observed?
Conventionally, authors and publishers of textbooks are authoritative, identified, and accountable for documented content that is periodically revised. In a public wiki document, however, authors are anybody and content constantly changes. What is true one moment may be swept away the next--by anyone. What is seen as politically incorrect or unfavorable to any particular entity (such as a group or government or corporation) can be cleansed--anonymously, repeatedly. Vandalism and deliberate misinformation are commonplace. Content is supposed to be self-correcting, as self-appointed experts police entries until the truth is fleetingly achieved consensually.
There is a demonstration site by Jon Udell--very effective--that shows changes to a wikipedia entry over time using the electronic equivalent of time-lapse photography with voiceover. It shows the progressive development and correction of information about the use of umlauts in the names of heavy metal bands (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html). The demo shows how corrupt entries are removed within seconds of appearing, how accuracy is continually honed through word substitutions, and how organization is gradually imposed on information after it appears--a breathtaking view of bottom-up processing at work. I think the demo is intended to inspire confidence in wikis as reliable sources of information, filtered as they are through a meta leveling mechanism: the online general public, which collectively knows what truth it wants.
I am not inspired to confidence, however. It scares me to death. The online general public has decided that we should learn and care about heavy metal bands and why they use umlauts in their names. The online general public also has decided that "Hitler-like," "Nazi-inspired" and "skinhead-related" are all too strong to explain the typographic preference for umlauts. They have decided on "Germanic" and "Gothic" but cite no etymologies, primary sources, or theories that might enlighten us on the first use of the umlaut in a band name and why it inspired such a raft of imitators. Is this truth as trivia? Democracy as tyranny?
Labels: academic writing, college textbooks, online textbooks, textbook writing, Wikis
Wiki Textbooks 2
Well, now that I've had a chance to survey briefly some wiki textbooks online, I see some clear pedagogical benefits relating to the instructional models I mentioned in my last post. The students are forced to survey a variety of information sources in order to construct text, which means more reading and writing and further development of literacy and thinking skills. In most cases the instructors structure the wiki text in some way, by providing a detailed table of contents, for example, to show the sequence of conceptual and factual categories of information that students should fill. Some instructors further structure the collective textbook writing project by assigning individual students particular topics and particular roles in the creative process. Student A might have to write an explanation of hybrid vigor, Student B might then have to provide examples of it, Student C might have to peer review or fact check the piece prior to publication, and Student D might have to be responsible for monitoring and editing subsequent changes to the entry. I thought this was a good use of the medium. It also points out other clear pedagogical benefits relating to social interaction and peer-mediated learning. El-hi education literature has promoted cooperative learning since the 1960s--along with discovery learning, active learning, self-regulated learning, authentic (contextualized or situation-driven) learning, and technology-mediated learning. It's interesting to see these models actualized in higher education today through dramatic applications of the wiki software.
I say dramatic because I think the changes are and will be profound. They will affect what we know and what we think we know, how we talk about things, what we regard as important, who we regard as an authority or an expert. Standards will fall left and right (starting with grammar and punctuation--e.g., how I resent public disregard for the proper use of apostrophes). Talk about dumbing down! And the changes will be mind-bending as well. We will learn (if we haven't already) to accept reality as an illusory, factuality as relative, truth as interpretation, uncertainty as normal chaos. Meanwhile, however, I now really want to co-write a wiki text!
I keep thinking of students in a summer course I taught at a state college on U.S. History and Constitutional Government, 1865 to the Present. I was an anthropologist, assigned out-of-field, and had successfully taught a few semesters of world history. With my Henry Steele Commager and various other hastily compiled texts, I managed to stay slightly ahead of my students, who, alarmingly, proved to be high school history teachers taking summer courses for advancement! I.e., they undoubtedly knew more than I did on the subject. We met once a week for 3 hours--a lot of time in which to screw up. I studied day and night and took a tutorial on constitutional law (way more complex than I had imagined), but I was still worried about the 3 hours. About halfway through the course I asked the students to team up and take particular constitutional issues that interested them to report on. To my astonishment, they flat-out refused! One explained, "We know what group work is; we assign it to our students all the time. But we didn't pay money here to do the work ourselves. We paid money to learn what you have to teach us that we can bring back to the classroom."
So I guess those students would not have co-written a wiki textbook with me. Maybe undergraduates don't notice (or care) that with wikis they do the work themselves. Which leads me to the questions, How will be know what to accept as true? and, What will be the role of the wikitext instructor?
Labels: custom publishing, custom textbooks, online textbooks, textbook authorship, textbook writing, Wikis
Wiki Textbooks
I'd like to explore a new topic and that is the application of wiki software to custom published textbooks. I have really mixed views on this and hope that comments on my posts will help me figure things out. On the one hand is the exciting prospect of creating a working text for a course through the participation of students with their instructor. This enterprise is the ultimate in custom publishing. At the same time it firmly supports and extends constructivist models of teaching and learning. These models feature students as active learners constructing their own understandings through their self-regulated development of knowledge networks. These networks are built up from multiple modes and sources of information, though primary source texts may be conspicuously missing from the discourse. Further, the networks are mediated socially through interaction with peers, experts, and audiences as well as through observation and experience. Because they allow students to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct knowledge networks, wikis give whole new meaning, and new scope, to the concept and value of student interaction with text.
This can only be good, right? In addition to permitting global pedagogical nirvana, the process is a perfect reflection of technological potential in our promiscuous Information Age. It is also a reflection, I think, of post-postmodern sentiment, which seems to discard both idealism and realism in favor of interpretivism. In this view, both reality (metaphysics) and truth (epistemology) are separated from moorings of any kind and opened to a sea of equal opportunity interpretation. And what is a wiki if not a constantly changing seascape with dubious new creatures evolving among the more familiar organisms? Because a part of me says, no, there have to be baselines, there have to be standards, benchmarks, principles, authorities. There have to be limits, constraints, disciplines. There has to be quality control. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned? Am I favoring censorship? I'm going to answer my own questions (and you are welcome to answer them also), but first I want to actually read some wiki textbooks. (Maybe I'm just a tempest in a teapot.)
Labels: college textbooks, custom publishing, textbook authorship, Wikis
Academic Authors Can't Write! --Part 2
Tests of student writing performance often show that students need more help in developing topics—using detail and citing examples (Newkirk, 1999). As a publisher (and former academic and textbook editor), I often find precisely the same problems in the writings of students’ instructors--manuscripts with page after page of unrelentingly abstract prose, excessive jargon, paragraph after paragraph on constructs with no hint that they have empirical analogs in the real world. This kind of writing does not raise or maintain intellectual standards; it prevents or impedes learning!
When asked to provide topical development with expository details and concrete examples, many academic authors are offended. They call it dumbing down. My beef is with academics who attribute dumbing down to textbook publishers as an excuse for their bad writing.
Revising expository writing to make it accessible to learners is not and should not involve dumbing down in either form or intent. Offering concrete examples is not dumbing down, for example. Concrete elaborations let readers imagine, visualize, or identify with representations or exemplars of an abstraction. This vicarious experience, in turn, engenders self-confidence in learners, who more readily rise to the challenge of grasping the difficult or complex idea in aid of which the concrete example was advanced.
A challenge with professors as authors is that many tend to regard their works as sacrosanct products of their intellect and standing, both hard-won. Frequently, then, they interpret requests for revision or development of their manuscript as the publisher’s nefarious effort either to abridge academic freedom or to dumb down a scholarly work. These are misconceptions. There are legitimate reasons, such as the following, that editors might ask textbook authors to change their organization or content.
• The book will be too long for its intended market or predetermined level of investment and has to be cut.
• Concepts lack adequate elaboration through concrete examples.
• Sources are not cited.
• Undocumented opinions are presented as facts.
• Undocumented facts seem inaccurate or misleading.
• Information seems outdated or lacks currency.
• Topical coverage seems unbalanced, biased, or unexpected for the course.
• Material is judged to be strongly offensive to some or all readers.
• Examples, language, or expression are inappropriate to the intended reader, course, or subject.
• Vocabulary level is inappropriate for the course level.
• The writing is ungrammatical, wordy, or full of “pomo-babble.”
• Digressions or redundancy compromise meaning or coherence.
• Material is too similar to that in competing textbooks.
• Material invites claims of plagiarism or copyright infringement.
• Chapters lack appropriate apparatus and pedagogy.
• The manuscript departs significantly from the previously agreed-upon book plan.
None of these reasons involves a request to dumb down. Thus, academic authors should not make this claim to excuse writing that is bad or inappropriate to their audience, course, or mission. Nor should they take it upon themselves to adulterate the knowledge they are attempting to convey. Students—whatever their state of knowledge—can detect gratuitously dumbed-down prose in an instant and are justifiably insulted. Dumbed-down prose is, in Orwell’s beloved cuttlefish ink analogy, insincere (Orwell, 1946).
In truth, textbooks need to be clear, coherent, and concise—the three C’s championed by William Strunk so long ago (1918). In addition, textbooks need to address their true readers—the actual students whose learning is at stake, not the professor’s dissertation committee, journal review board, or tenure committee, not colleagues, critics, or prize panels. On the other hand, meeting learners “where they are” in their intellectual development does not require leaving out either big words or big ideas, especially when glossaries or pronunciation guides are provided in textbooks. Rather, meeting learners “where they are” requires clarity, coherence, and concision of exposition. Knowledge about learning also is important, for in the end analysis, textbook writing is teaching.
The solution? I think institutions of higher learning, academic departments, professional degree programs, and scholarly publications should provide more opportunities (and more rewards) for academics to learn to write sound expository prose. We also can hope for a more balanced attitude toward textbook publishing as both a vital form of teaching and a valid form of scholarship.
Labels: academic authors, academic writing, textbook writing
Academic Authors Can't Write! --Part 1
Of course, it's an exaggeration to say that academic authors can't write. I say it in the the same sense that "white boys can't jump." But still, among the many academic authors I've worked with, only two or three of them would I say were good writers. Most are wordy and imprecise, inconsistent in style, unclear in exposition, inflated in jargon and ego, pedagogically unsound, and, worst, they lack an authentic and attractive authorial voice (the one true source of a textbook's success).
Many other observers have noticed problems with academic writing, such as the Journal of Philosophy and Literature’s famous Bad Writing Contests (Dutton, 1996; see www.denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm). Canadian journalist Robert Fulford referred to academic writing as "pomo-babble"—“the tortured polysyllabic prose common in academic writing” (National Post, 7/15/03):
“Scholars in the humanities spend much of their time writing, and are forced constantly to read the work of superb writers. Yet they pour out streams of gnarled and barbarous sentences and don’t even know they are doing it…. Crimes against language are not victimless, of course. Academic life has become a publish and perish world: Professors publish, literacy perishes. Students perish too.”
I find it ironic that so few professors write well, especially for students, and that even fewer recognize this fact. Why is this? What are they doing wrong? And what can be done to improve the quality of writing for both scholars and college students? If you have thoughts on these questions, I hope you will comment.
Labels: academic authors, academic writing, writing
The Academic Ego, Part 4: Pricing Outfalls
This is the 4th installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Author perceptions about academic freedom and the transformations of the publishing industry brought about through digitization challenge academic editors in new ways. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka 2007: All Rights Reserved.)
Pricing Outfalls
Publishers began addressing the issue of pricing only when the great success of the used textbook industry became known, and again following price revolts early in the 21st century. Students now can buy used, foreign, and pirated English-language copies of textbooks online, and some universities opt to rent textbooks to deliver by the chapter to students via their intranet servers. The publishing industry also has responded with streamlined low-cost or coverless editions and e-textbooks, uncoupled from their supplement packages. Nevertheless, textbooks that don’t do well—or that compete directly with the publisher’s more successful new acquisition—often are retired, and the academic ego is bruised again. "I got dumped for a bigger gun," one angsty author put it.
In academic and scholarly publishing, in contrast to textbook publishing, complaints about prices usually refer to the high premiums that libraries must pay for print and electronic journals that publishers monopolize. Library consortia have fought back to great effect, aided by online networking. In some well-publicized cases libraries have cancelled their subscriptions for the most expensive scientific, technical, and medical journals from companies such as Elsevier, Wiley, Academic Press, Blackwell, and Kluwer.
In addition, many scholars and researchers increasingly publish their work online, often using electronic clearinghouses for peer review. They make their articles available on a noncommercial basis, self-publish, and also generate increasingly popular blogs for academic discourse. These trends further challenge the publishing industry at the same time as they help stimulate the growing open-access movement in academe (Suber, 2002), such as the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Free Online Scholarship (FOS), and MIT’s Dspace.
Editors must be sensitive to the fact that authors have more options now than ever before. The road to successful projects must be paved carefully with information about the textbook publishing industry.
Freedom to Publish
Many academics champion the open access movement in the belief that it safeguards freedom of thought and expression. Academics take academic freedom very seriously and tend to believe that the publishing industry (and mass media) determine what gets published (or aired, etc.). They seem not to realize that publishers, like television networks, base their decisions on 1) market data, rather than on conspiracies sealed in closed executive meetings, and 2) shareholder expectations, rather than on megalomaniacal quests for world domination. In contrast with the realities, scholarly outrage over perceived threats of censorship or abridgement of academic freedom may be grossly oversimplified and thus tough for editors to deal with.
This outrage may stem in part from appocraphal imagery concerning mind control, perhaps from literature about cults or classic works such as 1984 or Manchurian Candidate. In textbook publishing, it also comes from the application of ideas about political correctness, in which, in Diane Ravitch’s words, publishers and editors become the “language police” in response to public pressure (2003). Editors requesting changes to a textbook manuscript may be thus accused. The authors of an introduction to psychology textbook who refuse to mention Sigmund Freud, because they do not approve of Freud’s ideas, for example, may fault the publisher for caving in to the demands of the prospective customers who teach the course! In this manifestation, the academic ego rests firm in the notion that people should know enough to want what the author is providing (and if they don’t, the hell with them).
Unlike editors of trade nonfiction, textbook editors routinely must ameliorate conservative, liberal, fundamentalist, Marxist, deist, feminist, existentialist, and other ideological “expository” prose to protect naive audiences and to avoid alienating the instructors who order the textbooks. Ufortunately, crusades in defense of Intellectual freedom may extend to moral claims about human rights to knowledge. A creator of prying and crippling computer viruses famously defended himself by claiming, "I don't publish viruses to cause a panic. I only publish to spread knowledge. I don’t think knowledge should be punished" (Zeller, 2005). Where knowledge is sacrosanct, then, so is the expression of it, and by extension the one who does the expressing. This is heady stuff, especially for people who live for what they know and what they think they know--the academic authors with whom academic editors must travel (like so many Sancho Panzas).
Labels: academic authors, Academic editors, Academic ego, author-editor relations
The Academic Ego, Part 3: Authors' Expectations
This is the 3rd installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Authors often come with (largely unjustified) positive or negative expectations of publishers, which can become a huge problem for editors. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka: All Rights Reserved.)
Real-world disdain among some academics (especially the princes of ivory towers) sometimes includes misconceptions about the publishing industry, including editorial values and practices, and about commerce in general. Animadversions about publishing as an evil empire abound in academe and appear to center on two themes: 1) disgust over what is perceived as a capitalist conspiracy for profit through economic exploitation, and 2) outrage over perceived threats of censorship or abridgement of academic freedom by media conglomerates. In the first, the author may assume one of two views, equally naive: that publishers exist to disseminate new knowledge and care about the development of academic disciplines, or that publishers exist solely for profit and do not care about anything else, not even what they produce (as in, “They could be making widgets”).
Some academic egos easily accommodate dissonant expectations, holding naive and cynical views simultaneously.
In any case, editors must manage to tread a middle ground in this minefield of expectations. The best houses support their authors’ careers and the academic disciplines their lists serve, while nevertheless remaining profitable—ruthlessly, if necessary, in light of capitalism’s prime directive.
Authors' expectations about income from publishing range from naively high hopes to outright cynicism (as in, “If I wanted to make money I wouldn’t be doing this”). Acquisitions editors often take shocking advantage of authors who think it is both a necessity and a privilege to be published and who do not expect material gain. On the opposite front is the textbook author who expects to retire on $200,000 USD annually for his or her introductory undergraduate textbook, or the scholar or scientist who expects to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his or her popularization in cross-over markets. (And, admit it, every high-end trade book editor probably dreams of signing a Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Daniel Boorstin, Camille Paglia, Jared Diamond, etc.)
Then, in a class by themselves, are the “anarchists,” authors who claim that scholarship is a moral enterprise that should not be expected or required to follow the dictates of (filthy) capitalism. Just as ideas cannot be copyrighted, all knowledge, they say, including that in books, should be free. As with religious fundamentalism, alternative views and practical realities have no defense. Some members of this class may very well be the people who in their youth felt entirely justified in purloining books, magazines, records, tapes, or CDs from corner stores and malls.
Anarchists, or perhaps iconoclasts is a more contemporary term, tend to be righteous, and many are drawn swiftly to wikis and open access publishing. Editors beware! Iconoclasts who stray into commercial publishing can become authors from hell. Some continually agitate for far more investment than the book can possibly afford based on projected sales. Worse, some come secretly or incognito and tend to produce unsalable POV books or masterpieces of disinformation, the whole time thumbing their noses at editors too stupid or ill-educated to recognize what is going down.
In addition, authors may naively or cynically focus on "capitalist exploitation" in publishers’ contracts and publishing decisions. Complaints about contracts often target meager (or lacking) advances or grants, low royalty rates with infrequent payouts, befuddling royalty reports, and unfavorable terms, such as taking all rights and then failing to return them in a timely fashion. Grievances about publishing decisions tend to focus on “acceptable manuscript” clauses, unrealistic drafting schedules, and cancellation policies. Failure to revise or reprint effectively kills a book—a bitter pill for authors, regardless of the strength of their academic ego. But there is no middle ground here. Publishers everywhere struggle to unload losers while attempting to maintain minimum industry standards for ethical practice.
Academic authors typically do not understand why their books may be losers and have no concept of the costs and risks involved in publishing. They often evince amazement, if not outright disbelief, to learn how small the margins actually are. Wise editors patiently educate their academic authors on these real-world matters. For example, authors are not aware of all the direct and indirect costs of publishing over which the publisher may have no control. They also may not grasp the complexity of issues that on the surface seem obvious. For example, authors may not appreciate the role of instructors, college stores, and students themselves in the pricing of textbooks. Complaints about prices, commonly referred to as price gouging, are in sympathy with students, who dispense inordinate sums for their burdensome course materials, especially textbook packages bundled with mandatory supplements (now a thing of the past since "debundling" has become mandatory instead). In any case, students and instructors then contribute to higher prices and loss of royalties by selling back their books.
Labels: A, academic authors and editors, Academic ego, author-editor relations, author-publisher relations, textbook publishing
Academic Ego, Part 2: The Ivory Tower
This is the 2nd installment of a previously unpublished article I wrote for academic editors to help them gain a perspective on the authors they work with. Authors come with (largely justified) ego, discussed in the 1st installment, and also with pressures surrounding textbook publishing, publish or perish mandates, and the constraints of ivory towerism. (Copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka: All Rights Reserved.)
Author profiles for acquisitions in publishing often reflect academic career constraints. Ideal authors for textbooks in higher education, for example, are associate or full professors, preferably with tenure, but perhaps not actively involved in administration. Active department chairs and heads of academic associations often are too busy with administrative duties to give textbook authoring projects their due. In addition, textbook projects may have low cachet in institutional or departmental qualifications for tenure, such that prospective tenure-track authors may feel they cannot afford to divert their time and efforts. Research institutions in particular may spurn textbooks as trivial, while at the same time applying immense pressure to publish.
The phrase "publish or perish" was publicized, if not coined, by Texas scholar Logan Wilson in his 1942 study, The Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession (Hibbits, 1996). "The prevailing pragmatism forced upon the academic group is that one must write something and get it into print. Situation imperatives dictate a 'publish or perish' credo within the ranks"(197). Logan interviewed professors (overwhelmingly male at the time) in a classic study of their attitudes, beliefs, and values about their academic life. Now, as then, tenure committees emphasize refereed scholarly publishing of dissertation adaptations, original short-term research, and review articles, quantified through calculi such as aggregate citation rates and percentage of articles with sole or first authorship (Goh, 2002). In contrast to these harsh intramural realities, academic milieus often appear to be shockingly isolated and naive in relation to extramural life or practical requirements, a phenomenon widely known as “ivory towerism” (Fuller, 1969).
French literary critic C. A. Sainte-Beuve coined “ivory tower” in 1837, when the term had positive or mixed connotations of strength, purity, virginity, and imagination (as in flights of fancy). The term entered American English around the turn of the century with a negative connotation that reflects the profoundly pragmatist principles on which that nation was founded (Becker, 1997). In the negative ivory tower stereotype, scholars and members of academia in general are socially aloof, detached from reality, or unaware of or insensitive to worldly affairs. Like all stereotypes it is not true, but it has been employed in culture wars since the Progressive Era, especially to criticize academics who somehow fail to embrace the applied.
It is true nevertheless that intellectuals tend to hone their knowledge on campuses and in the sheltered workshops provided in academic associations, research facilities, and institutions of higher learning. Although the dichotomy between “pure” and “applied” study has all but disappeared, disconnection between academe and the real world in many cases has not. Witness, for example, textbook authors who resist writing to actual reading levels of students or providing pedagogy with real-world relevance or practical lay application. In an academic author, the combination of proprietary knowledge, intellectual arrogance, and real-world naivety or disdain may constitute an editor’s greatest challenge.
Labels: academic authors and editors, Academic editors, Ivory Tower, Publish or perish
Academic Ego, Part 1: The Sources
My next series of blogs is for editors of academic and scholarly books. A couple of years ago an editor friend asked me how I can abide working with academic authors. Aside from having been one myself, I've had some experience on the editorial side, and so this is my answer. My aim was to explore issues relating to the academic ego while providing some insight for editors and their editorial enterprises. I would love to hear from editors and authors on the matter. What follows is a previously unpublished article, copyright Mary Ellen Lepionka 2007, all rights reserved.
The Academic Ego: The Sources
People who write academic and scholarly books and textbooks in higher education live for what they know and what they think they know. Underlying (and in many cases unconscious) assumptions are that 1) greater knowledge naturally results in intellectual superiority to others (in the abstract), and 2) one can never know too much. A corollary is the much-loved phrase coined by Francis Bacon in 1597: “Knowledge is power.” In the abstract that power is irresistible as the source of all human achievements of note—mastery of fire, harnessing of atom, programming of chip, and so on. Devotion to knowledge as power often predisposes authors to communicate in the abstract, however, as they cast ideas into unformed seas. One consequence is that academic editors everywhere must struggle with abstractions in expository narrative and must strive for concretization.
The classic academic assumptions also establish the defining conditions of intellectual arrogance, which even the most humble of scholars necessarily harbors, for as a mental enterprise the intellectual life is driven by it. Expository writing betrays this substrate of intellectual arrogance in surprisingly detectable ways, such as use of first-person pronouns, omniscient authorial voice, grandiose oral rhythms, obscurantism, love of jargon and irony and (sometimes) salacious humor, heavily seeded disclaimers, and paucity of source citations, along with the claim (stated or implied), “But, I AM the source!” Other giveaways are signature expressions, such as “Indeed,” “Of course,” “Certainly,” “Obviously,” “Perhaps,” “In fact,” “It goes without saying,” “All other factors being equal,” and the like. Good textbook manuscript editors purge these expressions, which, however, in scholarly works may lend charm.
Litmus aside, intellectual arrogance—along with positivist or idealist values of truth seeking (or beauty or perfection seeking), as well as mercenary values of fame building—drives the enterprise of scholarship. Cumulative knowledge becomes, acknowledged or not, the intellectual’s principal source not only of power but also of ownership, pride, and competitive advantage. Knowledge becomes capital, information and expertise its currency. This is intellectual property in every sense of the term. Editors everywhere will attest to the strength of ownership issues in academic and higher education publishing. These issues most often surface when authors are asked to revise in response to market analyses, reviewer comments, or editorial suggestions (as in, “Who’s book is this anyway?”). In this context, academic ego often spills over from chafing under editorial direction to maddening disputes among coauthors.
Academics acquire their intellectual property over a long time, at great financial and personal expense, amid strong competition in high-risk contexts, and usually in milieus that do not make it easy or convenient for them to be successful. An average of ten years separates a B.A. from a Ph.D. in anthropology, for example, and an anthropologist’s professional career usually is not considered to be officially underway without Ph.D. in hand. Subsequent career barriers, including institutional policies and departmental politics, significantly affect job placements, work assignments, publishing opportunities, promotions, and tenure. These conditions select for intellectual arrogance as an adaptation for survival. Thus, knowledge and expertise must be marshaled, tested, branded, guarded (perhaps jealously), and leveraged, and the provenance and distribution of intellectual achievements must be carefully controlled.
Labels: academic authors and editors, Academic ego, intellectual arrogance
Choosing a Textbook for Your Course--Part 10
This is the 10th and last blog entry from my article on EVALUATING COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS FOR COURSE ADOPTION. © Mary Ellen Lepionka, March 30, 2006. All rights reserved.
When to Consider Not Using a Textbook
Courses without textbooks are a mixed bag. For example, courses bent onindoctrination tend to rely on doctrinal literature rather than a textbook, andinstructors bent on epistemological control may seek to serve as the sole providerof course content. Knowledge is power, and all that. On the other hand, coursesintended to stimulate critical thinking, creative problem solving, and intellectual resynthesis may well rely on primary sources and critical material rather thanstandard textbook fare. Many upper-tier and graduate courses are prime candidates for not using a textbook, especially with motivated, independentlearners with good attendance, and especially in interactive seminar courses with small enrollments that rely heavily on discussion.
Some instructors go for definitive works by “dead great white men,” controversialpopularizations by celebrities, or works of notoriously original thinkers. Imagine,teaching sociology with Georg Simmel or C. Wright Mills, for example, or anthropology with Claude LevyStrauss or Richard Dawkins, or history with Jared Diamond or Howard Zinn. If your purpose is to inculcate, to shake up student mindset, or to promote critical thinking, and if your class relies on free discussion or structured discourse, then you probably should use original texts rather than a textbook. Just include more women and minorities in your selections (if you know what’s good for you), and make sure your students understand why a given contributor is regarded as “great,” controversial,” “original,” or “notorious.”
But know your limits. I once tried to teach world history through primary source excerpts alone. By the 14 th century, just when things were really getting interesting, I could no longer afford photocopies, and the students were becoming mentally exhausted from my “thing of shreds and patches.” My experiment ended with the bewildering (even to me) and hardly representative combination of Al Bakri’s observations of Ghana, Pope Urban’s call to arms for the First Crusade, Marco Polo’s description of the Mongol invasion of Japan, a translation of the “Song of Quetzalcoatl,” Boccaccio’s description of the plague, and a slaver’s ship manifest. Did I order a textbook for the second semester? You bet.
Labels: choosing a textbook, Criteria for textbook selection, custom textbooks
Choosing a Textbook for Your Course--Part 9
This is the 9th in a series of blog entries from an article I wrote last spring: EVALUATING COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS FOR COURSE ADOPTION. This post considers in role of supplements, textbook apparatus, and pedagogy in the selecton process. © Mary Ellen Lepionka, March 30, 2006. All rights reserved.
Supplement Packages
Ancillary material also can be a good reason to adopt. I have sometimes been swayed by outstanding or especially useful supplements, including, for example, courserelated anthologies, web sites, subscriptions, videos, and software. A web site with rotating 3D diagnostic fossils and animations on comparative anatomy, primate evolution, and human haplotypes and migrations sold me on a biological anthropology textbook that was otherwise too difficult for the students. I also once chose a sociology textbook because it came with a reader on expressions and consequences of globalization. As a result of state PIRG pricing protests, ancillaries now come unbundled as well as shrinkwrapped or boxed with the text. So, today I might be able to subscribe to the web site and order the reader without having to order the textbook.
Publisher research shows that textbook adopters most covet acetate and electronic transparencies (despite all the Tufteesque criticism of PowerPoints) and free videos. Many instructors also want a comprehensive Test Bank, perhaps even one that has been validated scientifically and comes with a testing service. Which supplements are most important to you when considering a text for course adoption?
Pedagogy and Apparatus
Something that many instructors do not know is that good textbooks are constructed to match what is known about the way people learn. In choosing a textbook, you probably will have the best luck with one that has been consciously endowed with pedagogy and apparatus. “Pedagogy” refers to instructional methods and teaching devices. “Apparatus” refers to the organization and sequence of elements within a chapter, unit of study, or book. For example, textbook apparatus minimally includes an opening section, the body, and a closing section for every chapter. The opening section may include, for example, the chapter outline, a chapteropening photo, a list of focus questions for the chapter, and an introduction or chapteropening vignette. The closing section may include a summary, a list of key terms, a set of problems or application questions, and a “For Further Reading” list. Chapter pedagogy, on the other hand, may include learning objectives, questions, captions, margin glosses, content recaps, features or boxes set off from text through design, and the like. Textbook pedagogy is supposed to be guided by scientific (more or less) models of teaching and learning.
There are many models of what happens cognitively when learning takes place, but the process of direct instruction generally follows these steps: 1) establish objectives, expectations, and relevance, or otherwise engage and motivate; 2) activate prior knowledge, or review any prerequisite knowledge and skills; 3) present new information, engaging students’ selective attention to acquire and remember the information; 4) use questioning to check for comprehension; 5) give opportunities for independent practice; 6) assess performance and provide feedback; 7) give opportunities to apply learning outcomes. Good textbooks do the same things.
In nondirect instruction, in contrast, students acquire content on their own through active learning and interaction with others. They learn through observation, inquiry, discussion, modeling, progressive skill approximation, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, and handson experience. This is good too, but rarer. Textbooks exist that favor one model of instruction over the other, and textbooks exist that attempt to combine the best of both worlds.
Does a textbook you’re considering have brief readings in each chapter? If those readings are identified as belonging to specific narrative contexts, then they are meaningful for learning and therefore are examples of pedagogy, the more so if they include an explanatory introduction, annotation, or question. If the readings are followed by questions that test students’ comprehension of the readings, this is an example of the direct instruction model. In this case, students are supposed to master the readings the same as they do the text. There will be questions about the readings on the test. If, however, the readings are followed by questions that ask students how the readings relate to chapter content or to life, then this is nondirect instruction. The students must discover a connection for themselves, and the textbook trusts that they can do so. Classroom discussion can confirm it. Which model better expresses your approach to teaching your course?
Generally, the more apparatus and pedagogy, the lower the level. However, beware the empty antipedagogy that bloats introductory textbooks! Beware the gimmicky, obviously outsourced boxes without context, relevance, interest, sense, or engagement with the reader. But please also avoid the prejudice that boxes are bad. Done right, boxes are paragons of good teaching, facilitating students’ rapid longterm acquisition of chapter content. Rather than interrupting and distracting from text, they are deeply embedded in narrative context and bring textual processing to a higher cognitive level.
Labels: choosing a textbook, Criteria for textbook selection, evaluating textbooks, pedagogy, textbook supplements
