I recently led a workshop in an intro class where all the readings are from a textbook. These are frequently used in Sociology and Anthropology and I assume other disciplines as well. I myself never had textbooks when I was in college, and I’ve never used them to teach with. Frankly, I find them bland and overwhelming. They seem to present boiled down and flattened information as a series of facts.
To my credit I came up with an in-class exercise based on a segment of a chapter that allowed students to enter the content imaginatively, and I think it was rather successful.
However, I still have this major misgiving about how to use these books to foster critical thinking and I was wondering if anyone had thoughts or ideas about this. For instance, what are the benefits of using them? How can you liven them up? Where does argumentative and critical thinking come in?
I think it is incredibly hard to make any course content come alive and have meaning for students especially when they are just entering college and trying to make sense of an entire course load and not just one particular syllabus.
I would love to hear more about your in-class exercise on using imagination and creative ways to get into the content. Could you do a post on that?
I understand your frustration with bland textbooks but I also feel that the students are paying upwards of $100 for these books and that there is a bit of a responsibility to make sure the students gets every little penny’s worth.
The exercise I did was based on a very brief section that covered “status inconsistency.” I divided the class in half and had one group of students describe someone they saw on the subway and speculate about them in terms of the three dimensions of status. I had the other other group describe themselves or someone they knew on the same dimensions and used this to foster a discussion about assumptions we make regarding status. It provoked a lively discussion and I think it worked well.However, one issue I have with these texts is that they are so dense in content. They are just packed with information. I know that the writers and publishers of these books make a lot of effort to include examples and little inserts that liven it up and provide context. But often I find these overwhelming. Publishers also often offer companion books and CDs. Maybe others have found these helpful, but I have felt overwhelmed by them. Text books like these are often thought to make teaching easier, I think. But I personally feel more comfortable going through the extra effort of putting together my own readings of primary sources.That said, I’ve actually never taught Intro. So feedback from others who have, and who have used text books, would be greatly appreciated!
I agree with the density of content in a text book and that it often seems like an overwhelming task to get through it in one semester let alone bring it alive for students. I am often advocating for the less is more in how much content must be taught per semester per course syllabus. If students are really going to be able to delve deeply into content then it would follow that more time should be spent on specific areas even at the freshman level, and not this constant Intro to… view of the landscape. I think it also comes to the bigger question of the college’s curriculum choices and how far they will let individual departments or professors go, which these days seems to be rather limited in textbook choice or content choice.
The textbook question is a big one; like Diana, I never learned with textbooks during my own undergraduate experience (even my Statistics class used a reader!), which left me more than a little flummoxed when confronted with the challenge of teaching with one.Suzanne’s right that students are shelling out the moolah and especially with Intro classes it’s our responsibility to make the information contained in the textbook a bit more dynamic than it stands on the page. In terms of Intro communications courses, I know some instructors who breeze through the book readings in half of the semester, preferring to use the textbook itself as an Intro text. While not my style this is perhaps possible in a course like COM1010, but certainly not all. (And on the other end, I know some Instructors who feel that more than one chapter per night from that textbook is too much for students to handle.) The reality is, unfortunately, that sometimes the textbook content (and what it emphasizes) doesn’t even match up with the course goals/objectives.I’ve had to make peace with the COM textbook, and do it by trying to create texture and variety in how we “use” it in class. So, for example, some days I choose not to even mention the textbook in class, even if the material we’re discussing might be related to the reading they did. On days when I think it textbook tidbits are *really* important, I’ll create a “warm-up” of questions or a provocative discussion question that relates specifically to the book. This helps them (I hope) to pick out what’s important (or what I deem to be important) from the dizzying array of info that make up a chapter. The day when we go over the formatting and organization of preparation outlines, for example, I have them actually schlep the textbook to class and create group work exercises that involve actually outlining the information in the chapters. While it seems a little dull on first blush, it gets the students manipulating textbook information, which is often not done.And the question of textbook choice, it’s seems complicated by what Suzanne mentioned– changing degrees of instructor autonomy– as well as the weird adjuncting landscape. I would guess that some adjuncts who teach the same intro class at a range of schools want the same textbook for all, for example, and others who have taught it for a long time might not want to shift. Others might just be handed a textbook and told, “teach this!” and maybe they’re grateful for the life-raft, and maybe they’re horrified at what they open up and find!