Students taking statistics at some community colleges won’t need to shell out $50 for the textbook Collaborative Statistics anymore. Rice University is making the book available free online after buying the rights from a commercial textbook publisher.
“We’re hoping that this is the first of many,” said Joel Thierstein, executive director of Connexions, an open-education effort at Rice that organized the giveaway. He said that even if only a few popular textbooks could be made available in the same way, it would cut costs for thousands of students. “The top 10 books alone would be enough to ease the burden of most community-college students significantly,” he said.
The Maxfield Foundation, which supports scientific research and education, provided the money to buy the rights to the book, though Rice officials would not say how much they had cost.
Not everyone wants to read books online, of course. So the Connexions project is offering a printed version for $31.95. Users of the book are also free to adapt the book to their own needs, and the hope is that professors will voluntarily update the book over time, given that its former publisher will no longer issue periodic revisions of it.
The project is affiliated with a broader effort to offer free learning materials, called the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. —Jeffrey R. Young
14 Responses to Rice U. Acquires Rights to Popular Textbook to Offer It Free Online
Rob - May 1, 2012 at 10:20 am
We do a 12 day mini-mester, and 5 week summer classes here at Blinn. I have not done Calc. 2, but Applied Calc, intro Stats, and other classes. Some tips that I have picked up:
1) Stress the first day how they will have little social life during the class. I project up all of the online homework due, and also a grid showing the schedule as a wake up call.
2) We use online homework, so that takes care of assigning and grading some of the drill problems. While it is not a magic wand, for drill problems online homework is great, and provides instant feedback. You might thing about using it, if you have time to set it up.
3) I have several “group quizzes”. I spend about 20-30 minutes on a topic, then give a quiz over that topic where they can use notes and classmates. After a reasonable time frame, and a short water – restroom break, I then go over that quiz. Hence immediate feedback and the “see it three times” idea of retention.
4) If you have to give some major exams (we do) plan carefully when you give those exams to be able to grade them!
Robert Talbert - May 1, 2012 at 10:37 am
Thanks for the good advice.
I’ll be using WeBWorK daily for online homework. I’ve used it many times before and it’s a great tool for early/small/frequent assessment of mechanical process tasks. We have about 20 faculty in my department that use it so it’s a fairly robust and automated system here.
I’m going to blog a little later about my idea for weekly collaborative assessments, which sound a little like your group quizzes.
One of the first clicker questions in the class will be, “Assuming that you should spend 2 hours outside of class for every hour spent inside class, about how many hours a day outside class should you be working on MTH 202 if you spread it over a 5-day work week?” Answer: 3.5 hours a day. That ought to get them thinking.
appliedmathguy - May 1, 2012 at 10:50 am
Wonderful post! One tiny, additional idea: Make all the assessments formative. Before giving out “right” answers, give ‘em a chance to earn partial points back by fixing mistakes (in written form, or orally/at the whiteboard) and ask them to do some metacognition around their original responses.
nivek - May 1, 2012 at 2:10 pm
de-emphasize techniques of integration. i do that in a regular term, so i’d be doubly inclined to do so in a 6-week class. the hard part of Calc 2 is the series stuff; i’d spend more time on that.
Robert Talbert - May 1, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Already there. The only techniques we’re doing are u-substitution and parts, and I spend twice as much time as that on series, esp. Taylor series. Here’s my calendar: http://mth202gvsu.wordpress.com/course-calendar/
kbartling2 - May 1, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Great tips for teaching any 5-6 week class. Thank you!
ikswodnawel - May 1, 2012 at 4:31 pm
As an engineer, let me be blunt here, no one is teaching here Calc II in 6 weeks. We are giving credits here. The other math courses discussed here are baby steps to calculus; and calculus II is a thinking process not a quiz you take on line. In the real world, as design engineer or a math teacher this process of quickie course is disruptive except for self-learners or math wizs. Heaven help the quality of students who finish this quicky course which I expect is a pass/ fail situation or maybe a bell curve to satisfy the masses. SAD!
11186108 - May 1, 2012 at 8:39 pm
I’m concerned about the “assimilation” or “sinking in” time. In my experience spending 3.5 hours in one day doesn’t get ideas to sink-in as much as 42 minutes a day for 5 days would. Well, you don’t have that choice, but I suspect that helping/advising the students to break up their study time into, e.g., 1/3 shortly after lunch, 1/3 before dinner and 1/3 after dinner, would improve their assimilation.
Robert Talbert - May 1, 2012 at 8:55 pm
I can assure you that this course is not a “quicky” [sic] pass/fail job whose main intent is to inflate grades. If you really want to know what the course is about, follow along. The course blog is at http://mth202gvsu.wordpress.com and you can see for yourself. Engineers do base their conclusions on data and observations, right?
Robert Talbert - May 1, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Yes, one of the keys here is to guide students in their use of time. A couple of days of misusing it and it’s all over.
Alasdair McAndrew - May 2, 2012 at 8:37 am
Good luck with it. I’ve taught some summer courses in six weeks (the students just do twice as much each week as in a normal semester). It’s hard work, but also greatly enjoyable, as you can really build up a rapport with the students. I’m all for de-emphasising integration techniques, and of course also for use of technology (a CAS of some sort). I think that calculus, properly taught, should be about ideas rather than techniques, and it seems to me that your course is right on the ball with this.
yaya_colour - May 2, 2012 at 10:10 am
Wow – that’s a big challenge you have ahead of you. Good luck!
Our summer sessions are 4 1/2 weeks and its really tough to teach anything that quickly, so I feel your pain.
cwilli - May 2, 2012 at 10:47 am
Your five suggestions would apply to a host of other classes, and not just six-week ones!
fortysomethingprof - May 6, 2012 at 10:19 pm
I agree that the main intent is not to inflate grades. The main intent is to collect tuition during the summer and keep students “on track” so that yet more tuition money can be extracted from them in the fall. If they get too far behind, they will give up, and then they’re not paying into the system any more. It’s called “retention” I think. I’m not sure what kind of content really can be delivered in a six-week term, but there are certain subjects that require more time between classes for students to work on their own and for the subject matter to sink in. All universities face this problem and all “solve” it essentially the same way. Having said that, I guess your approach is as good as any I’ve seen, and I wish you the best of success with it.