The Art Institute of Las Vegas: eBooks

 (Of all of these books, only 5 of them were really used – sometimes a couple assignments were given from the books, but they could have easily been taught by an instructor)

 

 

(These two books were for my online classes – they weren’t necessary at all.  There was assigned reading, but there were no exams, and the most we would use for an assignment was maybe having to cite one source from the book)

 

The book Thinking with Type:  A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students was for my Typography class.  A couple weeks into the class, I did a search to see how much the book was priced, and I found http://thinkingwithtype.com/.  The whole book is on that website.  It has been nearly two years since I found that website and it is still up and fully functional, so it can’t be up illegally.  I brought the site to the attention to my instructor, and he pretty much shrugged it off.

 

In my first quarter, I bought all the books I needed for my classes.  This included Essentials of Sociology, A Down-to-Earth Approach (9th Edition).  It was well over $50 at the time.  I then found out that it was offered as an eBook after I got to the first class, but the syllabus didn’t mention the book was an eBook and the instructors were (and still are) pretty adamant that you have your books by week one.

 

Half of the other books we barely used, and a couple of the others we had reading assignments, but we were never tested on any of the material.  It was generally some class discussion and those who never read the material basically got away with it because those of us who read it pretty much just discussed in class what the material covered.  Instructors hardly ever call on students to answer questions, so most of the time it was the same 3-5 students in the class discussions who ever talked.

 

A crummy thing about these eBooks is that they are a five year rental.  After five years, I will not have access to these books.  The only book that I would want after five years is The Challenge of Democracy: American Government in Global Politics, 8th Edition. Pretty much the only books I have in hard copies are my government/economics books and REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book, so I know this book I would return to every once in a while.

Because they are in my account, I can’t share these books with other students after I’m through with the class unless I give them my school account and password.  Maybe that was the problem – students were sharing books (I know I was) with each other and not buying them as much as they could be.  Solution?  Forced purchasing with no opt-out option!

The sad part about this whole book situation is that we hardly even use any books.  Some instructors give tons of homework from the books, but then don’t set class time aside to teach us from the book or go over the material.  Homework is generally a very minimal amount of the final grade (usually around 10% up to rarely 20%), and it’s hard to justify spending hours and hours doing homework if it isn’t even worth much and/or aren’t tested over it.

 

Personally, I’m not a fan of eBooks.  I believe they discourage learning because of the CTRL+F feature.  People can find the answer they’re looking for by just using the “find” feature.  This allows them to not read the whole book, chapter, or even paragraph, which could lead to easily misunderstanding material.  They are handy for that function, but I’d rather have a solid book in my hands.