I think the textbooks are a challenge for students because of the price at times. Sometimes the cost of textbooks are to much for students especially those who don’t get covered by financial aid. But also the material sometimes compared to what the lectures are teaching in class can be showing you two different ways to learn the material which sometimes can be confusing.

OER does great with addressing the cost but sometimes depending on the topic, the OER text can be way to vague for a college student that’s where it fails.

I think students should be able to evaluate textbooks for a couple of reasons. While taking math I realized that my teacher taught me different than the textbook did on how to do stuff so it often confused me. As well as sometimes I realized that the book didn’t give me enough of a depth explanation so therefore I had to do my separate research.

I think the 3 important things to consider would be :

The cost because a lot of students aren’t gonna buy a book if its way to expensive. The material the text should reflect what your teaching in class and in about the same ways. Finally, if we really need the book it would depend on the class because if we don’t need the book than what’s the point of telling us to purchase it.

The most important thing I learned from this seminar would be about the other resources available to me as in textbook alternatives outside of what the school tells us to purchase because I did like some of those books a little better than my regular textbooks and they broke it down in an easier way.

The importance of evaluating a textbook

Textbooks are not only about grouping a bunch of information to share with students so that they could learn from, but also they are about quality, precision, and affordability. So many students are not able to buy those textbooks because of their prices or either they bought them without even being interested in learning from it because of the length and unnecessary information. In this case textbooks represent a challenge for students.  I think OER does a good job into addressing these challenges. OER textbooks are affordable and the information from them is precise, simplified, and valuable. However, some of the OER textbooks fail to present enough study aids such as review questions and some tables. Because textbooks are a core part in students’ learning, I think they should take into account to evaluate the textbooks. It is going to help them extracting the good information out of it and decide whether this is valuable or not and take profit out of it. Their learning experience is going to enhance based on that.

If I was a professor selecting textbooks for my classes, I would consider the clarity, the important study aids, and the price of the textbooks. Not all students can afford to buy a textbook, which is very expensive and sometimes used for a short period of time, and read something which is not well structured or clear. The most important thing I learned from this seminar is the evaluation of study aids and structures in the textbooks because before I did not pay attention to those things. Now, I know better and I am going to use this knowledge when choosing my textbooks.