to play cop to our students. Part of the process of maturity is taking responsibility for your own actions, not relying on an external agent to make you do what you know you should be doing. This "tool" is the antithesis of that concept.

I like CourseSmart's online books - they have made it a lot easier for many of my students to afford or simply use (for example a quadriplegic who can't leave the house, but was able to take on online class because he could use his computer to read the text). I do not like this idea.

But, given that my institution is currently considering a series of draconian measures to "encourage" students not to linger beyond the standard two or four years, I anticipate that they will think this idea is just the ticket and pay oodles of state dollars to CourseSmart for the institutional version of this computerized hall monitor - that we will be expected to use.

how many haven't already figured that out?

The professor throws a rope around the neck of the sluffer and restrains it by tying the rope around three limbs to force it into submission. All while on the clock trying to accomplish the task as quick as possible.

Wait, we actually want the sluffer to read and learn? Damn, there went that plan.

like to see the trophy buckle for that event.

Not "which students actually read Chapter 5?" but "which chapter had the lowest percentage reading it". Presumably the system could be set up to report aggregate data like that, and it might help the professor teach the class (help even more if the professor wrote the textbook).

Just about all of the theories of education start from the premise that the lessons, textbooks, and tests are 100 percent valid in teaching and evaluating students in an educational environment.

Having studied many diverse subjects in classes and in independent study, I can report that many textbooks, as well as classroom environments, are mediocre at best.

When I studied a subject, my intention was to learn enough about it to be satisfied with my efforts. I evaluated my learning efforts myself because I was motivated to learn.

The only valid way to evaluate whether someone has learned something is to see if they can DO something useful with the knowledge that they have supposedly gained.

Can the student write a coherent essay, give an understandable lecture, write a valid computer program, play a musical instrument, perform a dance, act in a play, repair a car?

Just reading a textbook, doing lessons, and passing a multiple choice test doesn't imply any useful learning took place.

The most important factor in learning (and the most neglected) is the motivation of the student to learn.

It's none of their business how much time students spend reading textbooks. Would I receive a lower grade because I didn't highlight or because I skipped a chapter? How many textbooks contain information addressed in previous courses? I didn't waste my time on such redundancy.


Here's to paper textbooks.