Etextbooks.02: Don’t Leave Students to their Own Devices

My previous post presented a conclusion from my colleagues:  etextbooks are simply not that special, pedagogically speaking. The group’s conclusion was that etextbooks aren’t substantively different from conventional textbooks.

Since then I created several pedagogical enhancements for an introduction to World Religions etextbook on the Inkling platform for Fortress Press. I’ve reflected further during that process, and I think there is a general point that sets etextbooks apart. There is also something unique about using our textbook in World Religions courses.

From Slates to Tablets

First, however, I wish to set the counterpoint into relief with some pedagogical retrospection on my family history. My mother’s first educational experience was in a one-room schoolhouse at the end of her parent’s driveway. She started her work using slates, and she completed her B.Sc. in Pharmacy soon after leaving the family farm. My father’s education began in a little town on the prairie, and he eventually completed a B.Sc. in Chemistry.

Dad enjoyed calculus so much that he kept his slide-rule handy in the home office. My parents’ education was sufficient to provide a good living as well as contribute to other’s well-being (Do any of you use or eat foods made with canola oil?). Would it have mattered whether my parents learned with slates, slide-rules and paper textbooks instead of etextbooks? I don’t think so, and recent findings about iPads in education agree, but the reason makes my general point about etextbooks.

Legacy Learning?

Take a moment to think about the conventional textbook from the perspective of Marshall McCluhan: the textbook as a medium with a particular message. Conventional textbooks were conceived for an era of mass schooling by governments and publishing houses as a means of mitigating all sorts of gaps. For example:

• Between intellectual centers and places of learning.
• Among the urban and rural areas of a modern(izing) country.
• In teachers’ mastery of fields of knowledge.
• Among teachers’ abilities to convey and assess knowledge.

The history of compulsory teaching left us the legacy of the textbook, and it made a better life possible for people like my parents. Since their objective was to enable mass education despite the isolation of teachers and students, I think that textbooks – just like slide-rules and slates – carry a message that excludes collaborative learning. The message of the conventional textbook medium is that its users are isolated. Most textbooks today continue to convey this message.

The Promise of “Circuitry”

During the 1950s, McCluhan was already predicting the future of education while my parents were learning Latin and calculus from their textbooks in rural Saskatchewan. The following excerpt from an interview with him leads to my point about etextbooks like Fortress’ etextbook version of  Introduction to World Religions.

In a world moved by circuitry, travel won’t be necessary for learning. McLuhan claimed this was the inevitable future of humanity’s future conditions. Circuitry does more quickly mitigate the same gaps as conventional textbooks; but the circuitous connections of the internet make possible collaborative learning, which is not unlike what Steve Jobs once described as “interpersonal computing.”

And this is what an etextbook like Inkling does: it survives the pedagogical paradigm of isolationism tacitly supported by conventional textbooks. That paradigm collapses whenever and wherever circuits overcome the old gaps of mass education. The teacher and the topic are delegitimized in the catastrophic wash of the world wide web when the textbook paradigm collapses in the classroom and there is nothing to take its place.

Building New Platforms

Without attending to this situation through collaborative learning platforms like Inkling, we teachers leave students, both metaphorically and literally, to their own devices. The Inkling platform is a good beginning for the new, collaborative e-text paradigm. It enables students do create shared notes and bookmarks, to debate each other on content, to explore direct connections to the world, and to engage content that may be continually updated without having to buy a “new edition” (which is a reason why students choose not to buy conventional textbooks!).

The Introduction to World Religions on Inkling more than mere content, by which I mean a hum-drum litany of beliefs and practices that reduces “learning” in such courses to memorization of confusing religious singularities. Instead, the content obtains a much more memorable context , which enables a greater chance that students will move on towards deeper learning objectives that involve understanding and analysis.

Beyond Mere Play

An objective of education today must be to affect students’ perceptions of the messages conveyed by the ubiquity of web-based mediums stuffing their pockets, backpacks and living spaces. These devices can be isolating and students often use them for informal communication and entertainment (just look at the top apps on iTunes or on Googleplay), but students are being done a disservice by teachers who don’t compel their use for educational purposes. For this reason, the shift to etextbooks makes sense to me.

Photo Credit: “Eagle Pencil Co’s colored slate crayons.” From the collection of the Boston Public Library – CC by 2.0

Add to favorites