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In most college courses, readings carry the burden of conveying content, hence they are central to the educational experience of your students. Read all material you assign your students, to judge relevance and identify potential problems of interpretation or elements of controversy. In grading essay tests, you must be familiar with the sources on which they are based, whether these sources contradict one another, and whether they contain errors of fact or interpretation. For the same reasons, it is important to read the course materials if you are a discussion leader, lab assistant, or grader, even though you have not had a hand in choosing the readings. The most important considerations in choosing reading materials are: reading level, readability, content, cost, and number of pages per week.
If you must use a textbook someone else has selected, subject it to the analysis outlined below to determine its suitability. You may have to make up deficiencies, interpret difficult material, select additional reading material, or supplement the book in other ways.
On average, UNC undergraduates enter the University reading at approximately the eleventh-grade level, which means that they may not be able to handle the level and amount of reading material you assign. You can expect more of juniors and seniors, of course, and even freshmen need to be challenged by their reading. After all, nothing can replace the experience of reading original works. The danger lies in setting challenges so far beyond students' capabilities that they are overwhelmed. Publishers' representatives can provide information on the reading level of texts they sell, and colleagues in your department can tell you which texts and materials they have used successfully.
Determining readability requires that you read the material yourself. If you are choosing a textbook, evaluate the author's approach to the subject, layout of the chapters, and its pedagogical features. With regard to content, the book should be correct, precise, and accurate (the same criteria applies to all monographic materials). Look for clear explanations of complex ideas and for a variety of concrete examples to illustrate concepts. Check for logical organization within chapters and throughout the book. Chapters or units must be of manageable length for students to master in the time allowed, and should have pedagogical features which will help them read and understand the content: chapter outlines, summaries, thought questions, lists of important terms and definitions, colored or boldfaced type for significant content, and so forth.
Sometimes publishers sell student workbooks to accompany the textbook, and these can be useful if they contain exercises and assignments that correspond to your objectives for the course (don't automatically assume the workbook is a good idea--examine it as critically as the textbook).
You should also be cautious about using the teacher's edition of the textbook or the teacher's manual that may accompany the book. It is easy to be seduced into teaching a course from the textbook author's viewpoint rather than from your own (which is why textbook selection should follow, rather than precede, the selection of your course objectives). Beware, too, of the convenient lists of multiple-choice questions in the teacher's manual--many of them violate the principles of good test construction (see the teaching techniques section of this handbook for guidelines on using multiple-choice tests). These questions can serve as starting points for writing your own, but resist the temptation to use them wholesale.
The amount of reading you can require of your students depends upon several factors. Freshmen are not as capable of handling a heavy reading load as upperclassmen, and care should be taken to adjust the amount of reading, or the time allowed for completion, when the required material is extremely challenging (even for upperclassmen). Remember, too, that undergraduates usually take four or five courses per semester, and assigning a disproportionate amount of reading for one course may make it difficult for them to get all their coursework done. Once again, teachers in your department can provide advice in this regard. Ask several of them, however, because there may be disagreement about how much is reasonable.
If a textbook meets all your criteria but costs $75.00, consider the cost-benefit ratio for your students (similarly, a monograph and a half-dozen paperbacks may cost a considerable amount). Students taking four or five classes may be paying hundreds of dollars for their books alone. Although there are wealthy students at UNC, they are in the minority, and the average student is painfully aware of the cost of books. Some will even try to do without a book if they think its cost is exorbitant. Moreover, most students do not keep their textbooks for life. They are unlikely to get even a third of the price they paid when they sell the books back to Student Stores. One way to reduce costs for your students is to place materials on reserve at the Undergraduate Library.
If you discover that no single text or set of monographs meets your needs, you may wish to create your own textbook from different sources (assuming you have sufficient lead time). Local copy centers will provide forms for requesting copyright clearance, which is legally necessary for copying journal articles, chapters from books, and various other printed sources. These anthologies usually cost a great deal less than textbooks, and can be tailor-made to meet your course objectives. Of course, you need to consider the difficulty level of the individual articles you have chosen to include in the anthology. It is also a good idea to write an introduction for each article to provide some context for the readings. The best teachers also include sets of questions for students to answer as they read the articles.
If you teach a class in one of the natural sciences that requires a laboratory section, carefully examine the lab manual. Some manuals consist of little more than one or two typewritten pages for each exercise, with crude drawings of the apparatus, sold as a package through a local copy center. Others may be lengthy, expensively printed books, with pictures of materials and apparatus not available in your laboratory. Even when the manual is well-produced and appropriate for the experiments, it may not match information contained in the course textbook and you will need to make adjustments and corrections when you teach that material. If you are a lab TA in a large department, you may have to overcome problems and deficiencies in the lab manual by yourself. TAs who have taught the same labs in the past are an excellent source of information.
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Last updated: January 30, 2001