Shortly before blogging about my intentions for going textbook-free in Modern Algebra this fall, I had a conversation with my colleague next door about textbooks and the possibility of doing without them. Much of what I eventually posted came from that conversation. This afternoon, he poked his head into the office to tell me that he’s also going with out a textbook this fall, for his Discrete Structures class (sort of a combinatorics/graph theory hybrid). He’s going to require the students get the Schaum’s Outlines for the course material, but everything else is going to be from the web and on reserve in the library.
Maybe this can turn into a meme where every college prof out there can be challenged to pick one course this fall in which you normally adopt a textbook, and forego it in favor of a combination of homemade materials, web-based documents, and materials on reserve in the library.
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[...] The linked article also mentions a bill that would provide up to $75 in tax credits for textbook purchases. What Robert Talbert is doing looks way more promising and is likely to be much more efficient and effective when it comes to saving students money. [...]