As concerns mount over the costs and benefits of higher education, it may be worthwhile to glance at the benefits of high school education at present as well. Of course, high school costs, while high, are borne by the taxpayers in general, but it is reasonable to hope that there are sufficient benefits for such an outlay. One of the most…

In 1971, the state of Texas enacted a legislative requirement that students at public institutions complete two courses in American history. With that mandate in mind, the Texas Association of Scholars and the National Association of Scholars' Center for the Study of the Curriculum proposed to determine how students today meet the requirement, and…

Although not everyone needs textbooks, they still actively serve four audiences within the discipline. The four audiences that benefit from textbooks are students, instructors, the textbook sales force, and the textbook authors themselves. With a growing number of online classes where students have less and less, or even no, face time with their…

Reasons are examined as to why students are reluctant to complete assigned textbook readings on a timely basis. Prior research suggested that lack of student motivation, lack of student knowledge of effective study habits, competing demands on student time, and lack of congruency between student objectives for the course and professor objectives…

Many people have considered purchasing a tablet device, such as an iPad, Kindle, or Nook, for personal use, yet how many have considered adopting this new technology as a pedagogical tool in the classroom? This article reports on the adoption and use of Kindle eBooks on the campus during the Spring 2010 semester. The authors report on how the…

Many college courses have historically been associated with large amounts of reading. For example, many biology courses required students to read trade books such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (Carson, 1962), or James Watson's "The Double Helix" (Watson, 1980), but now most instructors elect to focus students' reading on course textbooks and…

Professors have long assigned to their students works of which they were the author. The practice ranges from assigning commercially published textbooks they have written to having students buy a volume they have written and published or course packs made up of their own materials they have photocopied. Not only individual professors, but also…