Partially Ordered Thoughts

(This is part of a continuing series. Part IV came before it.)

Having selected the Axler text, I had to get permission to adopt it. I sent a request to the undergraduate committee along with the preface and table of contents for the text and Axler’s email (discussed previously) about the rational root test. The request was for more than just changing the text, as I wanted to improve the awful description given to the course. (See the request for the existing and proposed descriptions.)

Then I waited. I was at a conference when the committee met, so I just had to hope that they would listen to me, since no one on the committee actually teaches precalculus and most of them don’t care about it at all. I kept badgering the committee chair about things, as he decided to let the committee members have almost two weeks to mull the decision over. Eventually, he had enough votes to proceed with the choice for Fall 2009, but they decided to make it a one-term decision and not mess with the course description. They said they’d consider doing something more once I’d finished teaching the course from the text, which I guess was a reasonable way to handle things if you’re a faculty member scared of letting the people who actually teach a class give input on the course description when it doesn’t even make sense as phrased.

Of course, once I got the text selection approved, I had to work with our Textbook Coordinator to get the info to the bookstores. This has proved interesting. Since I plan to use WileyPLUS and won’t require the students to have the physical text, the bookstores really don’t have to do anything. However, some students will want a real book. Unfortunately, students have a hard time reading shelf tags (I worked in the Textbooks Department at the NDSU Bookstore back in the days when it was the Varsity Mart, so I know this all too well), so I didn’t want them to just put books out there. Inevitably, some poor student would buy it, unwrap it, sign up for WileyPLUS, and then find out they don’t need the book but be unable to return it. Fortunately, Engineers Bookstore decided they won’t stock the text, just order what the Athletic Association wants for scholarship student-athletes, and Barnes & Noble at Georgia Tech has a “Go to Class First” adoption status that is more emphatic than just “Optional” and makes it clear students shouldn’t buy the book until they’ve come to class. The number of emails it took to get this all straightened out was annoying, but we did get it taken care of. I’m really glad we’ve got a great textbook coordinator to help us with these things.

With the text finally lined up, I’ve now been able to work on designing my course. I’ve got lots of ideas, and I’m getting them formulated. Later this week, I’ll post about the first couple of steps in the design process—determining situational factors and setting learning goals.

(This is Part IV in an ongoing series. Part III has links to the previous parts as well.)

Shortly after my visit from our friendly neighborhood Wiley representative, the books started pouring in. My Wiley representative sent me the Axler text, and boy did she ever send me the Axler text. In an effort to show me the various bindings in which it’s available, I got the paperback version, the binder-ready version (with a binder that I find a bit oversized in one dimension), and the hardcover version (times two). I really don’t know why any one of them alone wouldn’t have been enough to help me make my decision, but I guess that’s the way things work. Shortly after the first copies of Axler arrived, I got a rather heavy box from our local Pearson representative. The box contained five physical books, but even though they all were nominally different, I’d say it’s more accurate to describe it as containing three different texts. Read more »

(This is Part III of an ongoing series. I suggest reading Part I and Part II first.)

As I previously mentioned, a Pearson representative had set me up with an account on Course Compass so that I could check out some of their texts as well as their online homework system, MyMathLab. Before I got too far along in convincing myself that this was something that I wanted to use, I talked to a few people familiar with the system. I spoke with a fellow graduate student who’d used MyMathLab as a recitation TA for one of our math for management majors classes, and he reported that it seemed like it had been beneficial for the students. A friend from NDSU who’s now finishing graduate school in the northeast has experience using it with students, albeit on an extra credit basis, but most of them really liked it. One of our instructors is currently using MyMathLab with her finite math class and reported that it’s working well, more or less, although she’s had some issues with answers that require a decimal answer, as the system doesn’t allow her to specify a tolerance for correct answers. (Apparently the questions are supposed to be designed to specify how many digits are required, etc., but if students have the potential to round at an intermediate step, their answer might be right for five or six places and wrong in the seventh, which shouldn’t matter, but does to the software.)

By and large, I was impressed with CourseCompass/MyMathLab, and the price point is great. Read more »

(This is the second installment in my series on updating precalculus at Georgia Tech. Part I is a good starting point.)

Knowing that timely adoption would be the key to getting used texts for my students for the fall, I jumped right into the process of finding a new precalculus text. The Larson/Hostetler text from Cengage stayed on the list, since if the only way to cut price was to cut quality by an unacceptable amount, I’d stay with L/H. I asked our textbook contact to look into the possibility of a custom edition that doesn’t contain the massive amount of the text that we don’t use, as that usually manages to provide some cost savings.
Read more »