Comments on: Escaping textbooks

By: Questions about the algebra course « Casting Out Nines

Questions about the algebra course « Casting Out Nines — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:46:26 +0000

[...] about the algebra course 8 11 2007 Jackie asked a series of good questions about the textbook-free modern algebra course and some of the student outcomes I was seeing in it. I tried to respond to those in the comments, [...]

By: Five positive student outcomes from the textbook-free algebra class « Casting Out Nines

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:15:29 +0000

[...] algebra class 7 11 2007 We’ve got just 4-5 weeks left in the semester and until the textbook-free Modern Algebra course will draw to a close. It’s been a very interesting semester doing the course this way, with [...]

By: Carnival of Links « Chicago, Athens, and Jerusalem

Carnival of Links « Chicago, Athens, and Jerusalem — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:38:31 +0000

[...] teach an advanced college math class (Modern Algebra) without a textbook? Professor Robert Talbert intends to find out. UPDATE: link to Robert’s post now [...]

By: Textbook-free Modern Algebra update « Casting Out Nines

Textbook-free Modern Algebra update « Casting Out Nines — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:19:34 +0000

[...] Algebra update 3 10 2007 It’s been a while since I last said anything about the textbook-free Modern Algebra class experiment. This is mainly because the class itself is now underway, five weeks into the semester, [...]

By: Carnival of Links « Chicago, Athens, and Jerusalem

Carnival of Links « Chicago, Athens, and Jerusalem — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:11:07 +0000

[...] 3. What’s it like to teach an advanced college math class (Modern Algebra) without a textbook? Professor Robert Talbert intends to find out. [...]

By: Ian MacLeod

Ian MacLeod — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:08:45 +0000

A great idea. I am currently wrestling with the same dilemma teaching information technology at the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC). I have managed to convince my second year students that they can have a successful learning experience without textbooks. It’s quite funny how students complain about the cost of textbooks, and many do not buy them, but they really complain when there isn’t a textbook at all.

I have replaced textbooks with wikis and other Web 2.0 tools such as Netvibes, and lately have been exploring the use of Google Groups and Google Notebook to replace textbooks. Both allow access control if that is an issue, and both allow for collaborative development of the space. I think that both have great potential to create learning resources that will be much more vibrant, relevant, and participative than any textbook could ever be.

I look forward to reading about the development of your course.

By: coderprof

coderprof — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:29:10 +0000

One nice thing about intro computer science curricula is that we have several reasonably priced books designed for professional programmers, rather than students. in the best case, I can require a $10 O’Reilly “Pocket Reference” book to act as the official course text. Most other classes have a decent $30 to $45 option. It is only when you get to subjects like compiler theory that you are clearly in the textbook-only realm.

Teaching at a open admissions state college with inexpensive in-state tuition, I am very cognizant of the fact that books can represent a quarter to a third of the cost of a course.

By: Rudbeckia Hirta

Rudbeckia Hirta — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:05:29 +0000

I very much love the undergrad version of Hungerford.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:46:18 +0000

JALP- I tend to agree with you about Gallian. Although I think it’s still probably the best book for an undergrad abstract algebra course, it does have a sort of maddening lack of overall coherence. There’s no recurring theme — no set of 3-4 basic concepts that show up repeatedly, instantiated in different contexts, that hold the entire book together. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t really have a *course* unless you’ve worked out your main motifs for the course in advance and deliberately reintroduce them through the semester to make the whole body of material gel together. That’s the first step I take when planning a course out, and it’s something I need to think about carefully for this fall.

And the notation drove me crazy too. I can see the reason for using angle brackets for ideals — he’s trying to stress the similarity between ideals and cyclic groups — but my students just couldn’t get it straight that the notation means one thing in the group context and another in the ring context. And my students knew all about cyclic groups by the final exam BUT couldn’t correctly recognize that they are all isomorphic to Z or Z_n, and in fact they thought that all cyclic groups were finite. Ouch.

By: Just another liberal professor

Just another liberal professor — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:38:42 +0000

Oops, that should be “using no textbook”…time for bed.