Well, I am in week 5 of my first textbook free semester, and I am keeping my head above water (Linda Lee...write that down for our conference presentation). I gathered so much material over the summer, that now I am sifting through what I really want to use about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. I am starting to use a lot of case studies (National Center for Case Study Teaching). They are great classroom group activities, come with answer keys, and teacher's notes. I strongly encourage you to check these out. They have case studies for all disciplines.
At this point I have two three ring binders. The one that has EVERYTHING (well, everything after the first clean out) and the second binder is for only the stuff I have used and it works. One lesson I learned is sometimes students need much more direction. For example, I had this great idea of having each group put together a historical time line for Psychology and then we could talk about them. They were suppose to select at least 15 things to go on the time line and tell the class why they thought it was important to include. So each group went out on the Internet with their iPad minis and put together their time line. Well, did you know that some 19 year old students believe that when the first organization for psychology was developed in England is important to include? Wow...I didn't realize how diverse their selections would be. So I had to modify for the next class. I gave them items that were important in the history of psychology and they had to research them to find out why. MUCH better!
The last thing I would like to let you in on, is this has definitely taken me out of my comfort zone. Directing them to find information is much different than telling them the information. For the most part I think it is going well. The only data I can give you right now is at week four in Fall 2013, I had already lost about 10% of my students. This semester, I have lost 2%. I started with 50 students and used to use a textbook that cost approximately $40. So going textbook free, I have saved students $2000 of upfront textbook costs. Could you imagine if I had been using a $200 text (which we do have in our psych dept.)? That would have been a savings of $10,000 alone...in 2 classes for ONE semester.
In closing, even though I feel like a fish out of water (write that one down too Linda), it is a much more interesting class for me because it is different with every group of students. With that being said, in honor of this program, I would like to leave you with some sounds of whales.
