e-edukacja w kraju - E-mentor

Virtuous Circles, Vicious Circles and Virtual Booksdates for online conversion so let us see how this canand should work. After considering such courses, theeasy cases, I shall consider courses that currently posemore difficulties.The End of the Textbook Anthology?Textbook anthologies are inefficient. Minimally theseproducts provide access to primary readings, selectionand organization. Some provide various pedagogicalextras including editorial introductions and comments,selected bibliographies, “study questions” and the like.Most are packaged in an aesthetically pleasing format.None of these things are worth paying for.Access to primary readings for these courses is readilyavailable online and materials that are not availablecan be scanned and put up at class websites or onlinelibrary reserve. Librarians and bookstore personnel,who are knowledgeable about copyright regulations,can help instructors meet legal requirements which,in many cases can be satisfied by password-protectingaccess. Copyright law is complex, and the interpretationof its provisions is in flux and varies by countryand jurisdiction. The purpose of this discussion is tocanvas the technical and logistical issues involved inthe use of online materials. Legal concerns are beyondthe scope of this discussion. Instructors who intend touse materials that are not in the public domain needto be cognizant of legal issues and should consult withindividuals who have expertise in copyright law andthe constraints on “fair use”.Legal issues aside, however, we do not needtextbooks to make the readings readily available tostudents. Moreover, most of us do not need, or wantthe selection and structure that textbooks provide. Weare as qualified as textbook editors to select readingsfor our courses and organize them by topic, and muchbetter situated to tailor our selections to suit our interestsand meet our students’ needs. The “ancillaries”publishers imagine will attract us are useless or worse.As for aesthetics, admittedly textbooks are more attractivethan the three-ring binders full of printoutsthat students in textbook-free courses produce. ButI do not think that such packaging is worth the priceof the book or, more importantly, the cost of selectingreadings and organizing courses to fit the textbook inorder to justify making students buy it.In some circumstances a textbook is a quick anddirty solution. If we are teaching general educationcourses on topics in which we have no expertise andlittle interest, a textbook anthology with the standardarticles suitably organized cuts preparation time.However, even if we want the selection and structuretextbooks provide, we can get it without buying thebook: we can use the table of contents to structure ourcourses, and link the readings. It is, of course, easierand more convenient to buy the book and pass thecosts onto students – but not by much.It does seem like cheating to appropriate a tableof contents without buying the book. But here weought to ask why. What if we all did it? What if wesimply grabbed the tables of contents of textbookanthologies, put them up at our class websites andlinked online readings to the entries?This would wipe out one of publishers’ mostpopular product lines, making it more difficult forthem to operate profitably and so more difficult forthem to…produce more textbook anthologies. Morepoignantly, it would cut down on our publicationopportunities. Textbook anthologies provide vitaentries and occasionally royalties. Moreover, forevery textbook anthology there is one, or more, ofour colleagues who toiled to put the thing together– wading through the literature, making the selectionand creating the structure, writing introductions andstudy questions, assembling the project and queryingpublishers. We would be stealing the fruits ofour colleagues’ labor, much of it pretty miserabledrudge work at that.But is all this drudgery worth it? There are hundredsof textbook anthologies on the market, whichcost thousands of man-hours to produce. The opportunitycosts are real: these are hours their editorscould have spent working with students, preparingclasses and, of course, doing original research. Theselections these books include overlap substantiallyand most of the work is further wasted because themost important product that they provide, information,which was once otherwise inaccessible, is nowavailable on the Internet.In the past, textbooks and journals provideda medium that increased the amount of informationavailable to students and faculty, who in turn financedpublishers so they could make more informationavailable. That was the virtuous circle of publishing.Currently the Internet is a much more efficient mediumfor disseminating the information than journalsand textbooks have traditionally provided so, in anattempt to remain competitive, publishers trick outtextbooks with worthless “ancillaries” and make themfatter, glossier and more expensive to add value (asthey see it), restrict online access to the content ofjournals, sell rights, charge licensing fees, and suefor violations of copyright. This is the virtuous circleturned vicious: in the interests of remaining profitable,publishers attempt to restrict access to information 7 .And that is both wasteful and futile, because theavailability of content online provides a cheaper andbetter alternative.How to make an online textbook anthologyFor instructors whose courses typically requiretextbook anthologies as their primary readings andwhere the readings are journal articles or sources inthe public domain the way. Here is a model.7http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/17/gsu, [02.02.2009].luty 2009 97