Compiled by Andy Jones, English Department
Originally Presented
in July, 2000 at SITT
In the last few years, many academic publishers have used new means to persuade faculty members to adopt their textbooks. Whereas college faculty were once pleased to receive an instructor's guide with practice exercises and study questions, today instructors expect teaching resources that take advantage of advancements in instructional technology. This handout, meant to accompany the SITT talk titled "Academic Publishers to the Rescue: Companion Websites and CD-ROMs," lists the locations of academic publishers' websites (which you might want to bookmark in order to reserve future examination copies) and previews the sort of companion sites and CD-ROMs that many publishers offer with adopted textbooks.
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/library/publisher.html
When contacting publishers, I usually begin with this page from the Institute for Astronomy site (in Hawaii). Most of these publishers merely list titles and provide contact information. A few, such as Allyn & Bacon/Longman, Harcourt Brace, Columbia University Press, Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, Wadsworth, and Bedford/St. Martin's Press (see below for all), provide clear explanations of their companion sites, CD-ROMs, and academic software.
http://www.socialpsychology.org/acadpub.htm
Another directory of academic publishers, each with a link to publishers' representatives. Visit publishers' home pages to see possible companion sites and other relevant resources.
Allyn and Bacon/Longman's is the first and one of the most impressive sites listed on the Cornell bookstore site. After clicking on Allyn and Bacon's home page, visit Technology Solutions at http://www.abacon.com/techsolutions/ and note all the options, tools, and approaches available. See my second handout for a quick demonstration of one of Allyn and Bacon's companion sites.
http://www.hbcollege.com/instructor.html
Harcourt Brace offers online quizzing and testing and a "syllabus generator." Like Allyn and Bacon, Harcourt Brace has developed content to accompany their textbooks via web-supported or distance learning classes taught with WebCT.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/electronic/idx_cd.html
Here Columbia University Press offers descriptions of its seven companion CD-ROMs. Sometimes, as with Diana Eck's book about world religions in America, Columbia offers a link to the professors' own site, in this instance Harvard's Pluralism Project at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/. Another Columbia University Press "Electronic Guide" called KanaClassic teaches the user the user the classical Japanese language in what one critic called "a brilliant welding of technology and the writing brush."
http://www.dushkin.com/webquester/index.mhtml
Dushkin/McGraw Hill offers "Webquester," an interactive program that "teaches" students internet research skills and introduces web-based resources, including many written by McGraw-Hill authors. Web-Quester comes with interactive exercises and quizzes, research assignments, and assessment options that include having the scores of pre-formulated quizzes e-mailed to the relevant professor.
In order to use Webquester, the professor must order a Webquester Guide for his or her students; currently McGraw-Hill offers guides in eleven subjects, from American History to Astronomy to Sociology.
Find a full description of Webquester at http://www.dushkin.com/webquester/profinfo.mhtml
Preview Webquester titles and content at http://www.dushkin.com/webquester/preview.mhtml
Order Webquester for your class at http://www.dushkin.com/webquester/profs/profreg.hts
http://www.dushkin.com/using/strategies.mhtml
Dushkin/McGraw-Hill also offers some strategies for computer-assisted teaching, responsibly covering topics such as distance education, pedagogical principles, web-site design, etc. This site is clear, filled with helpful definitions and explanations of the basics. Visit the"Teaching with Technology Links" at http://www.dushkin.com/using/links.mhtml
McGraw-Hill's Higher Education site offers their textbook adopters help with starting a simple webpage with one of their course management systems; PageOut (which is exclusive to McGraw-Hill) and WebCT were the ones mentioned most often. With each the instructor sends all the relevant information to a publisher representative and she or he phones back with a choice of 16 templates.
McGraw-Hill's site mentions all the hot topics (such as web-based textbook support material and digital content for online course delivery), but I was so put-off by their website (too busy, print too small, some pages too large and slow, some with dead-ends asking for registration numbers) that I can't recommend their materials.
Norton, on the other hand, has a lovely site, but not much to offer teachers looking for electronic support. I'm impressed with the way the publisher's home page fits on one screen.
Wadsworth Publishing Company offers "WebTutor," a "content-rich, web-based teaching and learning aid" meant to complement WebCT. To learn more about "WebTutor" and other such tools, as well as view a sliding navigation bar (neat!), visit http://www.itped.com/.
Bedford/St. Martin's Press specializes in the Humanities texts and topics. I used a St Martin's textbook companion site with a class I taught this past spring and was impressed with the quality of the content. The online resources were written by one of the textbook's authors, included syllabi and assignments used by the author, and even included the authors' pedagogical principles. I found this much more helpful than interactive quizzes and video on CD-ROM, but I also teach the smaller courses in writing and literature for which the Bedford sites seem ideally suited. Bedford/St. Martin's also offers texts in History (with interactive research modules), Music (with Listening Charts), Religion, and Political Science (with abstracts and outlines of the chapters of most books). The companion site to the book that I taught with in the spring can be found at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/waysofreading/.
If I didn't mention any resources in your discipline, or if the publishers I mention here don't have what you are looking for, simply visit the search engine Google at www.google.com and type in the name of your field (e.g., "economics") and then the words "textbook" and "CD-ROM," or "textbook" and "companion website." You'll discover many resources that you didn't know existed. Write the publisher, especially if it's an academic publisher, and ask for a review copy of the CD-ROM or software in question. These publishers realize that if they can put quality IT-supported texts in the hands of your department's early adopters, then soon more instructors will be assigning these IT materials in their classes.
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