Tom,

I hear you and understand your frustration. I spend several hours a week talking to publisher reps. trying to sell me the "next best thing" which looks just like the "old bad thing" which teaches students to write 5-paragraph essays. Overall, I think, the publishing industry is dumbing textbooks down.

That is why I think the task of producing, publishing, and publicizing classroom materials of all sorts should be left to those who teach the classes. I know that it is easier said than done, though...

Pavel.

Granted that it's easier said than done, would Wikitexts make the doing easier (and cheaper)?

Tom and others:

There has been some discussion here about texts being published with Creative Commons licenses and made available to students.

I think wikibooks-type publications might be a good start. The way I see it and from my conversations with publishers, it appears that they are oblivious of all the discontent that exists out there. I am not sure that some of the reps even know that much of the materials which are usually included in the "new" editions of 60-dollar handbooks can be found for free on reputable sites, such as Purdue's OWL and similar ones.

The problem will be to convince enough teachers and administrators to adopt these alternative web texts, even to spread the word widely enough that they exist.

Pavel.

I agree that the book publishing world is kind of a huge, profit-hungry racket. At the same time, I actually enjoy talking to the reps who stop by, and they seem to listen to me and try hard send me books that do suit our needs (of course-- they do want a sale, which is their job, and everybody needs a job, right?). Some of the books are junk, but some are at least usable, and a few are actually pretty good. Plus, nowadays, publishers will custom publish a lot of their stuff-- for example, by paring down a sprawling textbook-- with the result being leaner and cheaper (haven't tried it, but am considering proposing it for a developmental textbook).

The open-source approach sounds interesting and worth pursuing, but isn't there a point at which the effort that goes into constructing such a textual environment for our students not quite worth the time and effort? Not meaning to squelch innovation, here-- I AM intrigued. But if a rep will supply me with a decent repertoire of textbooks, is willing to cut price and content to keep things affordable, and makes my book-ordering life a little easier-- well, that IS a factor for me. Not to mention that some stuff that students should read (or at least would benefit from reading) is copyright protected, period. No way around it.

Now this all applies to texts that are "instructional" and/or "anthologies of published works." Handbook-y stuff is less important to me, because, as you point out, so much of that stuff is available online. We've considered dropping our handbook, which does make our reps nervous (which I'm suspecting would be fun for some to see).

Also, this applies mainly to first-year comp in a BIG program-- we routinely run OVER 150 sections PER SEMESTER. And our dept is pretty committed to committees, and hence having all program changes approved by committees, which means innovation is slow (but democratic I suppose). In the realm of professional/technical writing (which is actually where I do most of my teaching), we HAVE dropped the textbook, completely. The big guns-- Lannon's and Markel's texts, are models of preposterously bloated books with very, very little ingenuity-- they're full of "revision checklists" and devoid of theory-- hell, they're devoid of just about any actual "ideas" at all. At 80 bucks a pop, we just said "bye bye."

- Jay Gordon, Co-Coordinator, Composition Program
Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH

A large-- huge-- publisher is paying my way to a workshop with 15 others comp program instructors. Which sounds like the ultimate devil's bargain, right? Yet, they swear up and down that it's intended to be more like a discussion group so THEY can learn from US directly, and NO SALES PITCHES will be made. I.e., they want to try to be less out-of-touch. Not the worst thing in the world, right?

I even told them, hey, I wouldn't even MIND seeing a table or something of your wares. And they said, nope, nothing. Now of course their name will be ringing in my head for weeks to come, which may be considered a kind of "viral sales" technique. But so far, I am actually impressed. It's in a few days-- I'll be interested to see what it's like.

Plus, nowadays, publishers will custom publish a lot of their stuff-- for example, by paring down a sprawling textbook-- with the result being leaner and cheaper (haven't tried it, but am considering proposing it for a developmental textbook).

I came into my office a few weeks ago and saw a full box of sample textbooks. Included in the box were a couple of catalogs for custom textbooks. I could pick any selections I wanted from a list of writings about grammar, rhetoric, sample essays, or whatever. The selections were all geared toward first-year composition, but I suppose it could be adapted reasonably well to developmental writing.

Have you seen any that were designed for a developmental textbook? I'm wondering how much it would help. If all of the choices say that an introduction has to end with a three-part thesis statement, then I'm not much better off than if I had no choices at all.

The one we're looking at is here.

Looks ok to me, but I haven't studied it cover to cover. Others on our "composition committee," though, seemed to think it's a good book but just too big (and expensive) for a 15-week course.

Some of us in New York City independent schools have been brainstorming this and are trying to get some momentum. Fred Bartels has started up a wiki for the Course Infowiki Project.

Please consider participating and contributing to the discussion. If we can get some schools to pay some teachers to write, I think there are real possibilites. Long term, start a foundation to organize the writing/paying of teachers and make sure to keep the Creative Commons involved.