Hi John, I'm not sure I can offer much advice here, but I'd be interested in hearing more about any responses you might get to this (both online and offline).
I teach two courses--introductory and intermediate statistics--at the graduate-level. Both courses tend to attract students who do not have mathematical backgrounds and who are often quite anxious about even having to take a statistics class (and question the relevance of the course). I have struggled quite a bit with finding appropriate textbooks for this crowd. I do have an introductory text that I like, but students end up having to skip around in it a lot since we don't cover certain things in my class, and that has led to frustration. I haven't found a good intermediate text that I like. I teach these courses both online and in the classroom. For my online students, I put rather detailed lecture notes together that are meant to (a) summarize discussions students have had, (b) explain content in the textbook that I think might be confusing, and (c) provide extra examples. Originally, my goal was to have these notes serve as a SUPPLEMENT to the textbook. Over the years, I've made these notes available to my classroom-based students as well. One thing that I tend to hear from students is that the notes are much more helpful than the text, and some actually give up reading the text altogether and do fine just by reading the notes. Of course, this could be a case of me enabling the students and giving away too much information in my notes that they should be able to get themselves by going through the textbook. However, it's made me wonder if I would better serve my students my just giving them these detailed notes. It troubles me to think they are spending a lot of money for a textbook that is not at all helpful to them. I'm glad you asked this question because I've been wondering if other instructors do this, and whether or not it would be appropriate. In terms of the photocopying issue, could you post these notes on a course site (i.e., something like Blackboard) and then make the students responsible for downloading them? That would likely be much less expensive for them than purchasing a text. Michelle On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:22 AM, John Kulig <[email protected]> wrote: > Tipsters > > About a month ago I posted a question about looking for a text for a lower > level measurement text, and made no progress finding a text. If you were one > of the people who asked me to share what I received, I am sorry to say > nothing came in. I am now considering using just my notes for this class, > typing them up replete with exercises, summaries, and so forth. I have > enough material to write a small book. Questions: Has anyone every done this > before? Can the department charge students for the extensive photocopying? > Is it worth-while trying to copyright these notes? Any help will be > appreciated, as the semester starts in a little over month ... > > ========================== > John W. Kulig, Ph.D. > Professor of Psychology > Director, Psychology Honors > Plymouth State University > Plymouth NH 03264 > ========================== > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13217.9dc6864f20548aa7f9d8500bc28dafef&n=T&l=tips&o=7161 > or send a blank email to > leave-7161-13217.9dc6864f20548aa7f9d8500bc28da...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > -- Michelle Everson, Ph.D. Quantitative Methods in Education Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota [email protected] 612-624-0691 http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/CATALST/<http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Edelma001/CATALST/> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7164 or send a blank email to leave-7164-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
