Last Ditch?

I have regularly contemplated ditching the textbook in the classes I most regularly teach – the year-long sequence of general chemistry and physical chemistry. In my first year as a new faculty member, I used the books the department had been using. We have multiple sections of general chemistry, and the instructors decide as a group which textbook to use. There is only one section of physical chemistry, however, giving full freedom for the sole instructor to switch books.

 

My general rule is that I should use a textbook at least twice before deciding whether to ditch it or keep using it. The first year I use a new textbook I’m just getting used to it. I should not be too quick to write it off unless it seems like an utter disaster. And I would not pick an utter disaster in the first place. In P-Chem 2 (Statistical Thermodynamics), I went through three textbooks giving them two years each. While each textbook was subsequently better than its predecessor, none was a good fit with the way I wanted to teach statistical thermodynamics. (All three were “standard” P-Chem textbooks used at many universities.) Hence, I did my first ditch and switched to creating worksheets and problem sets. Many years have passed since and I’ve been happy with my decision to ditch.

 

That third textbook worked well for my approach to teaching P-Chem 1 (Quantum Chemistry). They even had a standalone version of the textbook for the semester-long course, rather than the full year of P-Chem. I used it for years. But two years ago, I decided to rearrange some content so I could incorporate modern valence bond theory and also introduce hands-on electronic structure calculations during class sections. Since my worksheets had worked well for P-Chem 2, it was a good time to ditch the textbook for P-Chem 1. I converted my lecture notes into similarly formatted worksheets. I like the new arrangement but it still needs tweaking. There’s always room for improvement!

 

For G-Chem, there are more constraints to making textbook changes because it is a group decision. And when you are running more than ten sections of the course, this also means a diversity of opinions from the many instructors. I think we’ve used four different textbooks in the 20-25 years I’ve been at my current institution. But in the last several years I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with the present textbook and, for that matter, any online homework management system (which I feel has unfortunately become the driving force in textbook adoption). So this coming fall I’m breaking with tradition and will ditch the textbook. Since I will be teaching the small honors sections of both G-Chem 1 and G-Chem 2 this coming academic year, there will be little disruption with much fewer students switching sections. At least that’s my hope.

 

My plan is to use an open access textbook as a resource. It’s a decent book and covers the content reasonably well, though not as good as the very best commercial texts out there. I will supplement these with Course Notes for each class. It will take time for me to generate these extra materials, but I think it’s worth the effort. I introduced Study Guides a couple of years ago in G-Chem, and I think these have worked well based on student feedback. They are still being tweaked as I re-work the material in this new iteration of G-Chem. I will retain most of the topics following the usual sequence, with a few minor changes. We’ll see how it goes. If it works well, this might be the last ditch where textbooks are concerned! (Unless I get to teach biochemistry again, and I’ll have to decide what to do then.)