If you don't assign homework from the textbook, do students benefit
enough from having the textbook to make it worth the expense?
Is learning how to read a physics textbook an important skill, or can
the reading skill be achieved in other, less expensive, ways?
Is having the information bound in a textbook a sufficient reason for
spending >$100, or do class notes combined with resources on the web
provide the same benefit at much lower cost?
I don't know the answers, but they seem like important questions to ask.
Daniel Crowe
Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics
Ardmore Regional Center
dcrowe@sotc.org
Joel Rauber wrote, in part:
For the last two semesters, my solution has been to mostly assign
homework problems that write up myself (mostly taken from other
textbooks). I assign both hand written problems and we also use
WebAssign, so I'm using problems on WebAssign from other publishers
(which has required getting publisher permissions; most have been
cooperative). This appears to have solved the problem at the expense of
my time that could be better utilized in other ways.
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