As do I. Maybe I was clumsy. I didn’t mean to dismiss the idea of a textbook. It’s just that it affords a rethink. I find it problematic. I do dislike textbooks as a category. Which doesn’t mean that I lump them all together. (After all, I did single out “On Human Learn” as a polyvocal textbook and I did enjoy Thinking Like an Anthropologist.)
It’s more about trying to redefine textbooks for our work in Open Pedagogy.
Which can lead us back to:
What is a “Book”? - OEG Plaza - OE Global Connect
Of course, I didn’t mention some of the perceived advantages of textbooks, as they’re commonly represented. Standardization is a big topic.
I do find it alluring, in this case. What if everyone using the same textbook were able to work together? Sharing about their experiences (“this chapter proved difficult to teach”). Exchanging work done based on the material. Build knowledge bases. Consciously track learning data about ways textbook material and learning activities work together. Enabling collaborative learning across languages… I was musing about these things when I was using textbooks, and had discussions about those with publisher reps.
Since then, publishers have done some attempts at providing this kind of value to their readership. Haven’t heard much about these attempts that I find encouraging. It’s much more about publishers gaining data on learners’ behaviour than on building learning communities from the use of textbooks.
I’m sure there are textbooks which have everything needed, in terms of community support. Can’t think of any. Possibly in contexts where learners and teachers had to get together to create material, as has been the case with Digging into Canadian Soils.
Facilitating community action is tough work. Most publishers probably haven’t built strong competencies to help that work. Yet I keep thinking there’s potential, here.
It’s almost like the trend of fans supporting artists. Are we ready for a Patreon-like service in HigherEd? (I’m sure there are EdTech companies trying just that. What I mean is: can our scene benefit from “friends, fans, and followers”?)
How would our models need to be different for everything to work? (Please, oh please, don’t say it has to do with cryptocurrency!)
Back to “textbook” as a format, genre, booktype…
I’d like something modular. And some textbooks are somewhat modular, including a few from commercial publishers. The challenge, there, would be to maintain a connection between modules. If I want worldwide learning communities to coalesce around specific collections of resources, how could that work if people don’t use the same resources?
We “just” have to link those resources together! Linked Open Data, baby!
Ok, I realize it’s not that simple. Still, it sounds like one of those challenges which can have a straightforward solution as long as we define the problem and put our heads together to ideate, select, prototype, etc.
Gee! Who was it who mentioned Github, the other day? 