Comments on: Lecturers: A Bit On The Side

By: Chris Alexander - Apparently £3000/yr ain’t enough

Chris Alexander - Apparently £3000/yr ain’t enough — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:33:14 +0000

[...] noted by Chris in an earlier post of his (click to read), a very viable option would be to furnish the library with the required number of books. I know [...]

By: Alistair Fenning

Alistair Fenning — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:50:33 +0000

On the other hand – it does seem to be a very good book.

By: James

James — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:38:15 +0000

I think that when a lecturer pushes you towards the compulsory purchase of their book they are getting incredibly close to a conflict of interest.

It’s no different to an IT consultant giving advice to a company that says they absolutely must have this particular product that, conveniently, the IT consultant made!

As others have said, the learning materials for the course should be made available through the lecture notes, blackboard, or other free-to-view sources. To enforce the purchase of the book is effectively to force the purchase of the lecture notes, which any way you look at it is not fair.

By: Evronia

Evronia — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:10:44 +0000

You’re absolutely right about that Chris, and we have sometimes this problem in some educational institutions here in Egypt..

P.S. I love the photos you added with the post

By: Vicky Scarlett

Vicky Scarlett — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:23:50 +0000

I couldn’t agree more, although you are lucky to only be required to buy one essential book. There is a list of 3 or 4, or 6 in some cases of essential books per module which we are required to read to supplement our learning. Many are written by the lecturers, however many aren’t, and at ~£40 each, it becomes very expensive.
Books should be available on a password protected system, we are paying £3000+ tuition fees a year! I understand that it is not realistic in all cases, and that it can be useful to own a few choice textbooks (e.g. an anatomy book in my case), but key texts should be available to student, so that all can access learning, irrespective of financial situation.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:51:18 +0000

I am going to have to agree with you Chris. I think it’s unacceptable, and I wasn’t aware it was on google books until it was mentioned by yourself last week. I think in our case the information provided should essentially be “Lecture notes” or blackboard material like every other lecturer we have provides instead of the three slide lectures we currently have with this module. At the very least more copies should be available in the library.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:42:32 +0000

Interesting points. At my uni we were “encouraged” to buy a book, which a lot of the work circulated around.

Unfortunately is was an awful book, Java Gently:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Java-Gently-Prof-Judy-Bishop/dp/0201710501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255340119&sr=8-1

2 star rating on Amazon. If anything I think it set me backwards in learning OO. Many fellow students felt the same.

I just can’t understand why they’d push such a book on us, unless they were getting a backhander, or were totally out of touch with their students and learning Java.

Plus at £50 it’s extortionate for students, given the much better cheaper variants, and the poor content of the book.

By: Pat Parslow

Pat Parslow — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:27:27 +0000

I think you have a good point here. In fact, I feel that there should never be a single compulsory book for a module, certainly not one which was lecture-authored. Why no compulsory book? Because you ought to be able to find the information which is necessary to learn the subject in a range of other sources – including books and websites. If some of the material to be covered for the module is not freely available, then it should be made available through lecture notes. That is what they are for, not, in my opinion, as a script for the lectures to follow.
The second point is that a compulsory purchase of a lecturer-written book ‘cheapens’ the whole thing to my mind, whilst it clearly makes it more expensive for the students! I know lecturers are not as well paid as they are in other countries, but they aren’t that badly off that they need to wring extra money out of the debt-funded student body.

Having said all that, I am quite happy with our This Is Me workbook, which you can buy through lulu.com/odinlab. The difference being, of course, that we don’t make any money if you buy the printed version, and you can download it for free anyway