I loved being able to flip through textbooks in school, but yikes, the prices were back-breaking. Not to mention that I had no use for some of them after I was done with a particular class. Browsing through websites relevant to one's subjects seems easier and cheaper, but it seems to me that it's not REALLY studying. I still like the feeling of sitting down and reading a book on my desk.

As for the Wayback Machine, that's a big help, although sometimes it fails to catch some sites.

Several of my professors use either no textbook or  small readers. I like this because you know that since the reading was put together by the professor, you don't have to wade through anything irrelevant to the course. A lot of my professors use papers from my university's library database as course content. I don't like websites as much (I really resent "web exploration" assignments), but they can be useful.

Besides that, you can avoid the ridiculous textbook costs, where you are often paying for material (bundled CDs etc.) and content you don't use. They are often pretty heavy too...my chemistry textbook weighs more than my computer and has often caused backaches. If you like the feel of paper/out in the woods without a PC, you can print relevant pages off so you don't have to carry everything around.

From my perspective, as one who loves books, and much prefers reading from a well-designed book than from a monitor (unless I am reading Grist, of course), and would hope to convey to students the joy of the world of books, on the one hand; but on the other, as a liberal-arts teacher who strongly suspects the business in selling science textbooks is a super scam: I definitely come down on your side, and applaud what you are doing.

Not only are those textbooks horribly expensive, much more so than what we who teach languages and literatures assign; and not only are they very often barely portable and so not very convenient for use in the classroom; but also, much of their contents are becoming obsolete by leaps and bounds, sometimes day by day.  (That sort of thing does not happen very often with, say, Latin grammar.)  

The impression I have, which may or may not be accurate, is that the professional scientific societies have been very successful at getting the scientific journals, reference works and other sources of research materials to make such materials easily available on-line.  How complete that success has been, I would not know.  But it ought to make it easier to break away from the tyranny of the textbook.

In general, laws regarding copyright and intellectual property are entirely irrational, and desperately cry out for reform.  Yes, to be sure, authors, artists, producers, publishers, distributors all deserve compensation for their talent and their work.  But we are in a brave new world of information-transfer, thanks to the Internet.  It seems that perhaps the Chinese, in that quaint, anarchic, amoral, self-serving, opportunistic way they have sometimes, are helping us stare reality in the face, and indeed forcing us to move into the future.

In lab courses, are written guides to lab work necessary?  Are experiments traditional and conservative?  If so, there may be one place where printed bound matter is in order.  Also, there is presumably a fair amount of historical, traditional, "paradigmatic" stuff in each of the sciences that is not likely to change any time soon, and which a serious, committed student may still wish to have and refer to years in the future.  (What, though?  Star charts?  The periodic table?  Yuk yuk.)  (OK, "The Skeletal Pig" is likely to work for a bit longer.  At least until the genetically modified pigs start taking over, though.  Yuk yuk.)

I freely acknowledge that you science teachers have a lot more work to do than we do, in revising your reading lists and lesson plans from year to year.  It is not often that we get such a (fictitious!) bombshell as, "It is now believed by some scholars, on the basis of a recently discovered ancient letter on papyrus, that the Republic, a philosophical masterpiece traditionally ascribed to Plato, was in fact written by a Thracian slavegirl named Batrachophile, who over the course of several months in 374 BCE was sending Plato chapter-length installments, in the hopes that he would buy her out of slavery; and that he in fact later published that masterpiece under his own name."  Hopefully most classicists, teaching a Plato course, would take the time to mention something like that.  But by no means should we expect too much from them.  Happily, bombshells do not fall often.

On how to motivate students to do any work, let along do it willingly, gladly, eagerly, I stopped theorizing ages ago.  "Why, you young lie-abouts!, you cheeky little Visigoths!, when I was your age, we always did as we were told!  And with a smile on our faces!"  

Intriguing idea.  Some thoughts:

 I don't think the main argument should be to save money. Even though textbooks are expensive, they can be a bargain for what you get.  Many textbooks today seem much better written and  presented than those in the past.  The graphics and formatting can be much more imaginative and helpful. Whenever I want to delve into a new field, I pedal over to the Stanford bookstore to see what textbooks are being used. I also look at the booksales to see what textbooks are being offered.  Recent editions are often available for a fraction of the price of new books.

If we want good material to be generated, somehow we have to compensate people for producing it.  Writing, teaching and publishing are not the areas of society where obscene profits are being made.  Eric and his colleagues are putting in extra effort to research and collect the readings - they are to be commended.  But is this sustainable?  

Much online material is suspect - one really has to vet it carefully to make sure that it isn't being produced by a front group.  Too much reliance on the Internet makes one vulnerable to the efforts of special interests to frame debates.

Even if online material is written with the best of intentions, it has not received the vetting for objectivity and accuracy that a textbook receives.  

ON THE OTHER HAND,

Teaching students to become accustomed to using the Internet as an information tool is very very smart.  There's such a wealth of information out there if one knows how to use a search engine and can exercise judgment about the worth of material.  In fact, why not assign students the task of finding and vetting online material?  Perhaps a hybrid of a good textbook + links (some developed by students) would be the ideal

Many thanks to Eric and Terrence for putting their course outline, notes and links on the Web for other people to use. Please leave it on the Web after the course is over!  It enables other teachers to build on the work you've done.  For self-motivated learners, finding a good website such as yours is like striking treasure.

Courses composed of online material might be ideal for students in truly poor conditions.  Or for political and environmental groups who are working on a shoestring.

The lines between journalism, teaching, research and advocacy seem to be much fainter than they formerly were.

   American textbook prices are a scam.  It is a dishonest industry, and one that deserves no respect.

   In China, textbooks are priced just like regular books (I have contributed to several, made a couple of hundred dollars, but hey...).  

   Having said that, I don't use textbooks in my classes.  I print material as needed and do my best to reduce wastage (though some is inevitable).  The local English departments assign books, but when they do, they tend to cover all of the material.

   There is a huge market in used books here as well (and waitresses might end up with a 20 year old English textbook for their own study).

   Many of the schools use the internet a lot for teaching (my students don't have easy access), and it is growing more popular.

    But I do have a problem with using only web based resources.  There is a lot of misinformation on the web and also there is a lot of information that isn't on the web, or if it is, exists in greatly abridged versions.  My two fen (Chinese cents).

Patrick

All of us teachers have the responsibility to try to get our students to figure out how on their own to get information, how to get all the information that is relevant to what they may need, and how to judge how reliable that information is.

On Internet sources, it has been repeated by a number of our friends that they are not reliable, and it is extremely difficult how to determine the reliability of those sources.  Good; that is something that must be emphasized over and over again to our students.  Let them redirect the natural youthful rage that they feel against adult authority, against pretentious and preposterous contributors to otherwise well-meaning and trustworthy-seeming websites.  (No!, stop!, don't you dare hold up that mirror in front of my face!!)

Apparently Eric and Terence are doing absolutely the right thing, by staking out the territory ahead, beforehand, and later telling their students what specifically they are to look for and where.  That is exactly the way teachers should proceed with on-line resources.

Afterwards, though, students will want to do their own independent on-line "research"; and their teachers must really be strict on not accepting just any verkachte nonsense that cannot be verified.  Ideally, teachers will be able to monitor the students' research at one or more points before the assignment is submitted in its final form.  (Bart suggests assigning the students to "find and vett" on-line materials.  Sure, great idea; that should work fine in a small class; in a large class, though, it may be a bit too much for a teacher to stay on top of things.)  And hopefully the teachers will be able to get across to their students why certain cool-seeming stuff simply does not work as worthwhile respectable scientific source-material.  And hoping ever further, let us hope that that habit of skepticism, of needing to trust -- never completely, but more yes than no -- only the reasonable, the likely, the probable, even if the absolutely verifiable remains always out of reach, will be planted in the hearts of at least some of them.

On books:  There has been no more perfect information-retrieval system ever invented, than the bound codex (i.e., book), printed on good-quality paper.  What is on-line is of course retrievable much quicker, and perhaps more conveniently.  And it is available to people whereever they can get Internet access.  But, all that is digital will degrade, or, worse, rendered inaccessible by technological unreliabilities of one kind or another.  (Consider the fate of vinyl discs, the original "records," 72 RPM, or 45 RPM -- fun to have, impossible to play.  Weirder is the fate of those truly floppy discs from the earliest PCs of the early 1980s.  To say nothing of those brontosaur computers into which they fit.)

If it is printed on good paper and bound well and kept well, that book is going to last for a long long time, much longer than our brief lives.  All undergraduates should be made acquainted with how libraries work, and with what is available to them there, including assistance with on-line sources and searches, and with the more important point that true scholars are nothing without a good  library, and good librarians.  And all scholars, at every level, connected to a college or university, should understand that their purpose, in a sense, is to save, preserve, uphold, support, defend, treasure, illumine, increase the wisdom of, increase the brilliance of their library.

Respectively, of course.

Unfortunately, to Eric's students in NW PA, I suspect there is not a good research library close at hand.  No doubt Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, have very good opportunities in this regard.  Anyway, the several interlibrary loan systems are extremely important to countless scholars everywhere; and all students should be told about them.  Perhaps teachers should regularly design research projects that require students to use interlibrary loan.

It was my honor, privilege and joy to be working once, not so long ago, as a research assistant at the American Museum of Natural History.  I was frankly surprised to observe that their library's vast collection of printed books and other materials, NOT available on-line, some of it going back a couple of centuries and more, remains of essential importance to all the scientists and scholars doing research there.

Very interesting article.  You've done what I'm considering doing this year during my first high school environmental science course.  Unfortunately the link to your online syllabus doesn't work - at least for me.  I'd love to get a peek at it.