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From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Becoming CAI literate
Message-ID: <707@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 88 11:19:09 GMT
References: <2960@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <1988Mar2.125247.28809@lsuc.uucp> <934@aucs.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 101
Summary: Are there any good textbooks?  There is no support for producing
	 them.

In article <934@aucs.UUCP>, 870158a@aucs.UUCP (Benjamin Armstrong) writes:
> In article <1988Mar9.183038.915@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
  
> Even in lectures where the degree of interaction is very low, a good lecturer
> (and I have had a few) can present the material in a much more accessible form
> than in the texts which accompany the course.  I agree; the texts should be
> what teaches the student.  However, the professor should give shape to the raw
> material provided by the texts in a way which fits her own style and the needs
> of her students in lectures before moving on to questions, demonstrations,
> etc.  You can't expect the texts, even good texts, to be entirely suitable to
> the course.

For the courses I have taught over the years, I have found few textbooks which
I would even call reasonable.  The only one which I consider well-written was
written by two authors, with each part gone over by many people; unfortunately,
this book was obsolete when it came out.  I do know of a few fairly well-
written books; in none of the cases is the book, even if there is only a
single author, the work of a single person.  I do not mean that some chapters
are done by X and some by Y---I mean that no part of the book is the result
of the efforts of one individual.

Another problem is that the books are almost universal in slighting the 
concepts in favor of manipulation.  One can question whether this is not
unavoidable.  For example, the calculus course has three concepts, and
each of them can be stated, and well illustrated, in a few pages.  I think
that it should be considered criminal to pass a student who does not have
a reasonable understanding of those concepts.  I would be surprised if
20% of the students taking calculus meet these standards.  I am not even
sure how many of the teachers understand the concepts!  The bulk of 
the course is devoted to those manipulations which can easily be done by
computers.  The ability to do these manipulations is useful, but without
the concepts is even dangerous.

A problem with teaching concepts is that one student learns them in minutes
while another takes months.  The solution clearly requires that we abandon
some of the structure of our educational system, and our evaluations should
denote only knowledge and ability, and time and effort should be ignored.

BTW, I agree that a lecture is a bad way to present material.  However, the
lecture with discussion is a good one.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to
get students to ask questions _because they are afraid of betraying their
ignorance_.  How can we get them to realize that not asking questions is 
evidence of stupidity?  And the question should be asked when the material
is unclear.  Frequently, the instructor should tell the student to work on
the problem and come back if it is still unclear, but frequently the matter
should be handled immediately.  With a textbook, this is impossible.

> You might argue that in such cases, the professor should write lecture notes,
> photocopy them, and distribute them to the class.  While this may work in
> some courses (e.g. introductory courses), I feel that the presentation of a
> lecture by word of mouth, particularly as the student progresses to higher
> level courses, is a vital element of the social fabric of the classroom.
> A great deal more of the lecturer goes into a lecture than can ever be put
> into lecture notes or a textbook, and without that expression of himself, I
> fail to see how the channels of communication between the professor and the
> students will be opened.  Demonstrations and questions must be about something.
> Without the context of a lecture, the often vague recollections of the
> students are the only fuel for discussions.
> 
> Why do we spend thousands of dollars inviting guest speakers to come speak
> at our universities when it would be much cheaper and, as you seem to claim,
> more efficient to just distribute copies of an article written by the would-be
> speaker?  Is it just the thrill of hearing someone famous?  Oratory, so far
> as I can see, will never be replaced by texts in our universities because it
> has proven over the centuries to be one of the most effective and engaging
> modes of teaching there is.

> Ask some professors if they have the time or resources to write a textbook.
> The ones I know don't.  Have you ever written a textbook?  If you have, tell
> me if it was easy.

I have not written a textbook, nor do I have the talent.  However, I have been
a collaborator in writing books, and I have contributed to the writing of 
textbooks by others.  I do not believe that, unless there is already a good
textbook, a good textbook for a one-semester course can be written with less
than two man-years of professor time.  For a one-year course, the time should
be at least three man years.  Who is going to support this effort?  About 25
years ago, some of my colleagues and I investigated the possibilities for one
course, for which there still is no good text, and we found that no such
funding was available.  (I would not have been one of the people funded.)

Textbooks should be written by those faculty members who are both good at
exposition and are also active scholarly.  Under the present circumstances,
to do a good job they would have to almost abandon scholarly activity for
a considerable period of time.  They, and we, cannot afford that, with the
possible consequences that their scholarly prowess may be harmed.  Thus,
the textbook situation will not improve.

Even worse is the situation that many of my colleagues seem unable to teach
a course without following a textbook.  Of the courses I took, I claim that
the better ones did not have a textbook!

The problems are not going to be solved tomorrow.  Our books try to limit the
students to the level of the computer.  Are these cookbook courses better than
teaching nothing?  In some cases, I believe the answer is no.  Are our students
brain-damaged before they even get to the universities.  I emphatically say 
they are.  Can this be reversed?  I do not know.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (ARPA or UUCP) or hrubin@purccvm.bitnet