Textbooks: who needs them?
October 18, 2007 by Gary Schlee
I’ve been meaning for some time to respond to a blog post by student Scott MacDonald (currently on an internship) who questions the value of using textbooks to learn PR.
Now, let me disclose that Scott is not one of my students (wish he was) and that he appears to have spent about four times as much on textbooks as would be the case in our program. Nevertheless, texts have a role to play in any program.
Every year, our faculty agonize about where and when we can best use textbooks in our courses. We agonize for a number of reasons, the most important being a sensitivity to the high cost of specialized academic texts. Other reasons include:
- Is a text really the best tool for meeting outcomes in this course? (Does this sound eerily like the PR planning process?)
- Will students actually bother with the assigned readings? (If there aren’t any grades involved, odds are the answer is ‘no’.)
- Is there actually a book out there that meets the learning oucomes of the course? (I rarely encounter ones that do. Most texts are by authors who have their own take on what’s important. The academics’ books mirror the way they teach a particular course. The practitioners’ books mirror the way they think the content should be taught; a noble thought but usually rolled out in a vacuum that ignores methodology and curriculum structure.)
- Can the book be used for more than one course? (These are the most attractive options; I suspect the reasons are obvious to most of you.)
The result of this process is that we forego using textbooks in quite a few courses. Still, a program with no texts is a program in need of some ballast. Scott’s right; there is all kinds of useful PR information to be had for free on the web. But there is a lot of trial and error involved in determining its veracity. With textbooks, we’re not only paying for paper and colour photos. We hope we’re also paying for some quality control. Facts are checked. Copy is edited. Copyright is respected. Only authors with reasonable track records in the subject matter need apply.
Periodicals,books and discussion round out a well-resourced curriculum. They’re an antidote to the belief that all things can be found online. They’re an even better antidote to the belief that all things can be found in Wikipedia.
The key is balance. Scott got his money’s worth from his Canadian Press style books and I’m with him on that. I can’t imagine trying to teach a Copy Editing course without a style guide within arm’s reach. (It’s the CP books that are rarely sold at semester’s end. They end up on the desks at the grads’ first jobs.)
Next semester I’ll likely be teaching a course in which I will be using blogs and podcasts instead of a textbook. Am I simply capitalizing on a ‘cool’ idea? Not really. It’s merely a case of asking those questions in the boxes above. The course is Online Public Relations. Best tools for the job.
Scott, thanks for prompting the discussion.
In recent years, I’ve found that students demand road maps. They want to know “the right way”. They want proof. Examples. Experts who say this is the way to go. So, many students actually question why a course doesn’t have a text book because they like that kind of structure.
In many cases, it’s not the price of the text that galls students What really bugs (and insults) them are professors who insist they purchase a required text and then don’t use it throughout the course.
And, give up on trying to find the ideal text book. It doesn’t exist. That’s why they keep us around!
I would agree with you that we’re not done with books yet, particularly as reference materials – using blogs and podcasts for these purposes, as Scott suggests, would be very difficult for students as they can’t be easily indexed the way that a book can.
Podcasts can be cut up into chapters, but you still have to listen, and ears don’t skim nearly as well as eyes do, and the biggest (but not the only) problem with many blogs is that they don’t use metadata the way they should, and he should know – despite the tags here and there, everything in his blog is under the category ‘uncategorized’.
Imagine a book arranged like that…!
All of the ‘Web 2.0′ things that people never seem to tire of talking about (or are anxious to not be seen talking about) will continue to be supplemental. You’ve got to have your CP style guides, and as for the rest? Compared to the texts you have to buy in university, they’re nothing.
I’m not saying that being a professor on the editorial board of a book which you then instruct your students to buy is a kickback, neccessarily, but…
I’m just saying.
Thanks for posting on this Gary! Good points all around. Obviously, the textbook still serves a very important role in the education system and it’s not going away anytime soon for the exact reasons that you, Will and Christine have pointed out. Just wanted to shake things up a little bit :0)
That being said…….I’m happy to hear you’re incorporating blogs/podcasts into your courses. Based on my (very limited) experience, it seems that PR students are expected to have a basic understanding of this stuff when they come into an organization. Unfortunately, many communications and PR programs in the GTA continue to turn their noses up at the very thought of incorporating online materials into their classes.
Obviously, Centennial isn’t one of them.
I can’t wait to hear how teaching with blogs and podcasts instead of textbooks works. I think it is a great idea.
I taught a graduate course spring semester 2007 here at Towson University, and student-led discussions called “Reports from the Blogosphere” were a major element of each class. It was terrific. The students enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and we all learned a geat deal from it. But, we also had one textbook for the class, too.
I put a lot of effort into selecting the right textbook for each class. I try to limit required texts to one for each class to save students money and to keep it simple. Some profesors, like those in my doctoral program, will require the purchase of multiple textbooks for one class, then use only a few chapters out of each. I hate that, and so do my students.
I think your idea of teaching from/with blogs and podcasts is the way to go. It solves a lot of problems, plus insures the most current thought on any given issue.
I’ll let you know, Les, how it goes. Of course, the curriculum in this case is all about online and new media PR. What textbook can keep up with the changes in this area?