What makes a bad textbook

Don't worry, it's OK to be confused. Trust me. In physics, students often use the textbook in the wrong way. The most common misuse is to turn to it as a source for answers.

Consider the following physics question:. A 5 kg block is placed on an incline that is angled 45 degrees above the horizontal. If the coefficient of kinetic friction between the two surfaces is 0. There are a significant number of students that will start off with the textbook and search to the chapter on inclines. But wait, there is no such chapter!

How about the kinetic friction chapter? Again, no such luck. Maybe just flip through the book until there is a problem with a block on a plane—oh, here's one, but it's static friction.

OK, well maybe that will work. But physics problems aren't a game of hide and seek. It's not as if that particular problem is in the book and the student just needs to find it. Instead, physics problems are based on basic, fundamental ideas. For the case of the block on the plane you should use either the momentum principle or forces and acceleration.

Remember, it's a textbook, not a scavenger hunt. Then what should you do with your book? Many college courses still use physical textbooks and mandate digital content as an add-on—complete with end-of-semester expiration dates, which undermine resale value, for example.

These new materials do come with pedagogical advances. With traditional textbooks, each student is presented with the material in the same way regardless of his or her proficiency in that particular subject. Even Pearson, another behemoth in the textbook industry, now brands itself as a "digital learning and services company.

The software essentially streamlines the process of analyzing and reviewing a text—think a teacher reading an excerpt, asking questions, and assigning an essay— on a simple interface. This interface allows kids to highlight material, take notes, and ask their classmates questions virtually. It even includes a "raise hand" button that a student can click to alert a teacher if he or she has a question. The program, moreover, pre-selects what it considers difficult or particularly wordy paragraphs, flagging them with a "Close Reading" tag; clicking this button opens up an brief explanatory video.

Students can follow along with the audio version as they read the text—perhaps negating the need for the teacher to call on a student to recite the text out loud. The name alone—which, phonetically, sounds like a human—got me worrying about the prospect of a robot takeover, but I digress.

Behind the scenes, the software builds a database detailing the proficiency of each student, information that is then used to formulate questions tailored to kids based on what they find most challenging.

Essentially, the program—which is based on 20 years of research by cognitive scientists, mathematicians and engineers—can instantly assess the individual abilities of an entire class of students at a rate that would be impossible for most teachers. You have 20 kids, you have 20 different needs. For Zeydel, a veteran educator who started using the program four years ago, ALEKS has been able to fill in the gaps where she falls short.

Zeydel says she uses ALEKS sparingly: typically two days weekly and as combined with her traditional teaching methods.

This approach is generally referred to in education circles as "blended-learning," which is described as a middle ground in which teachers and digital learning materials can coexist. The key here is to approach it in a brain-savvy way. Get interactive. Use the book imaginatively with your teacher or exchange partner. Use techniques like testing and spaced recall of the material.

Look out for another upcoming post on just this topic. Third: realistic expectations of the book. I want to weep. A coursebook cannot work magic. No one book can give you enough reading input or assuming there is audio enough listening practice. Yes, use a textbook to maximum effect but make sure particularly when you get to the intermediate level and have the core structures and vocab to get lots and lots of listening and reading input.

Likewise, a textbook can never teach you to speak. Yes it can help explain pronunciation. Yes it can give you more or less useful vocab and phrases but you have to get down and dirty and use them, pushing through the discomfort zone time after time. A language textbook is like a cookbook or a car manual. Very, very useful, but no substitute for actually cooking or driving. All your considerations are based on conscious learning of language skills, i.

Try a totally different approach to Subconscious Training English Skills and you will discover a new world of acquiring language skills when subconscious is controlling the whole process. Learning is not valuable unless it can be used and remembered after the test is over. Studies have shown that failure first learning actually helps you to register the right answer more powerfully. Moreover, attempting to test yourself before you begin prevents you from making the same mistakes again in the future.

Instead, they should be streamlined to supplement the updated curriculum or subject being studied, not stretched to include years and years of research for the student to trawl through. StudyTime recognised this problem in the textbook market, and so designed their guides to directly correspond with exactly one subject standard for NCEA.

This has a number of benefits:. As such, they should fulfil the same benefits as good tutoring does: support the student in learning the subject, not doing the work for them. Teaching content is only one tenant of meaningful learning. In order for information to stick, it must take into account process of learning. This means they are structured according to what we know about how students learn best, drawn and adapted from the latest research in education psychology.

A good tutor would not stand in front of a student and cite off all the information they have on the subject possible to their students, expecting them to suddenly understand and be able to regurgitate it on cue.

Instead, good tutors make strides to connect the study material to diverse contexts, and apply it to a variety of diverse scenarios. They make the student feel comfortable and relaxed by maintaining a friendly tone and keeping up a good sense of humour.

They promote curiosity, dialogue and critical thinking by consistently asking questions, and encouraging their students to do the same. They experiment with a range of learning techniques, like mnemonics, diagrams, graphs, mind-maps, narratives and analogies — slowly working out what works for the individual student.

But fundamentally, they make sure the students understand why their subject matters. When textbooks pay too much attention to information, content and facts, without thinking about how that information is consumed or engaged with — they do their audience a disservice.

They should not only tell, they should also show, and perhaps, most importantly, they should ask back. At this time, students need to take an extra sense of ownership in their learning, especially as we head into the busy exam season. As a parent, it can be frustrating to watch as exams draw closer while your child continues to neglect their study. Most of the time, this procrastination stems from a lack of motivation.