Posts Tagged ‘identification of educational resources’

textbook or not

Zaghab, R. W., & Beckenholdt, P. (2014, June). Textbook-Free Learning: A Framework for Critical Analysis. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on e-Learning: ICEL 2014 (p. 190). Academic Conferences Limited.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ElMJBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA190&dq=textbook-free+Zaghab&ots=IDuokCrhcq&sig=hpg16tUnRLP00CgHJo9z7fY8uqM#v=onepage&q=textbook-free%20Zaghab&f=false

short link: http://scsu.mn/1XlEcLE

Abstract:

Textbooks are losing relevance in the higher education classrooms partially due to the high costs and slow speed of textbook publication in the midst of the growing supply of open electronic resources. With trends toward online course delivery, more colleges are considered online resources as a matter of policy without an adequate framework for decision making during times of rapid transformation. The purpose of this paper is to improve the balance and deliberateness of university decision making in considering Textbook-free approaches. The proposed line of inquiry responds to a critical and timely question: Under what conditions might Textbook-free online course resources offer the best approach to a quality higher education learning experience? A three-part analytical framework is proposed to consider resource quality, institutional commitments, and external trends. By distilling the literature, the authors propose: 1) universal quality indicators for online and open education resource selection for a course or classroom; 2) institutional factors and resources that impact the quality of the Textbook-free approach; and 3) the selection of instructional resources based on environmental factors and transformational change influencing fields of study. Punctuated equilibrium theory helps to inform the framework. With the assumption that classrooms prepare students for the world of work, the proposed framework identifies challenges to the identification of educational resources for fields undergoing disruptive change.