Textbooks have been the premier mechanism for presenting curriculum for centuries. While the printed word is powerful and, for many people, superior to digital versions, the physicality of textbooks requires that their content remains static. Errors are inevitable, as are changes in relevant topics or pedagogy. New editions are the only tool to fight against the decay of a textbook’s utility.1Let’s not fight over who’s at fault for the prevalence of new textbook editions or their cost. I’m typically quite impressed by the forewords I see in many math textbooks comparing editions, and believe much of the time a new edition is worthwhile. In an educational landscape dominated by digital tools, it’s tempting to have content updated rapidly and frequently. This approach requires a deft hand.
Let’s establish that although I’m frequently saying textbook, I mean physical curriculum whose core is likely a textbook. It contains pedagogical materials such as lesson plans or exams. When comparing the physical and digital options, we need to consider the impact on both raw information and the pedagogy: how the information is presented.
It’s straightforward that a digital curriculum offers improvement with updating raw information. Simple typos that could take years to fix in a textbook can be updated in a minute online, while new, relevant examples in the curriculum can be added or substituted to keep the information fresh.
These advantages appear to apply to pedagogical updates to an online curriculum as well. However, instructors need time to prepare according to a static set of information. If some teachers have crafted presentations and assignments that are aligned to this year’s version of the curriculum and it changes over the summer—or worse, in the middle of the school year—there will be flustered instructors scrambling to perform both administrative tasks (e.g. adjusting problem numbers) and larger pedagogical tasks (e.g. changing how a topic is presented wholesale.) Textbooks allow institutions to specify a version to plan against2Assuming they can keep it in print enough that students can obtain it. That’s a separate problem. and stick to it until they’re ready to update. Online curriculum nearly always follows a software subscription model, wedding its users to the whims of the creator.
Whether content should be dynamic is often a decision made in hindsight based on the quality of its stewardship, which is assessed by considering both the changes in the curriculum and how these changes are rolled out. Good changes that come unexpectedly will lead to strained relationships, as will a poor adjustment with plenty of advanced notice. In the worse case scenario, a provider can pull a George Lucas: The quality of the changes to Star Wars: A New Hope is poor, and so was its distribution. If anyone knew ahead of time that these changes were being made, we’d likely have a more robust set of theatrical releases available and wouldn’t rely on the de-specialized versions that have popped up.
Online curriculum requires its editors to understand the impact of an edit along multiple axes. They have to be confident that the change, which will immediately go live, is complete and correct. Ideally they communicate their intentions ahead of time. Finally they should be receptive to feedback by responding to concerns that are brought up, tracking patterns in user critiques, and communicating why a change was or was not made.
None of those elements are trivial, requiring several people to coordinate each part. Assuming these online curricula will not remain static—customers paying for recurring access would probably consider that a bad deal—it takes consistent staff to maintain the curriculum and ensure the changes are properly communicated and implemented. Ultimately the staff that aids in rewriting a textbook to provide a new version worth releasing3Again, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. is incredibly similar to the staff of an online curriculum provider, except the latter will “release” new versions on a regular basis.
The pace of these updates needs to be determined by each provider, just like the authors and publishers of textbooks. How long do you wait to have curriculum reflect a trend among students? Can you even publish the update before releasing it shows how out of touch you are? In some ways, the rhetoric around a textbook is simpler because everyone essentially expects it to be dated; the online provider may erroneously believe they can remain relevant only if they update with sufficient frequency, while doing so will only hurt any goodwill they may have accrued with the instructors who need to know the details of the lessons they’re about to teach.
It’s interesting to see how different platforms deal with dynamic content. YouTube doesn’t allow creators to upload replacement videos, while RSS makes replacing a podcast episode due to some error rather trivial.4There is still the problem of communicating to your audience that an older version had a problem, and to make sure to get the newer version. This blog can be as dynamic or static as I choose. I tend not to go back and edit old posts, unless there’s been a critical update to address or I want to change some style decisions.5The biggest change here was moving to \KaTeX for math rendering. Subscription software nearly always disallows ignoring updates or rolling back to previous versions, so any substantial changes can alienate a user base. While textbook publishers who make a poor new edition face a one-time loss, the online provider who causes frustration loses expected recurring revenue.
Handling content appropriately requires the creator to understand their audience and empathize with them. Much of what my company does is internal: we tend to run our own classes using our own curriculum, so the pieces are centrally created and used. In theory, this helps streamline the process and reduce variables, because we know when a new version of a class is running and can make sure any edits are made before it begins. This doesn’t always happen, and we’ve worked on improving our communication internally and externally, where relevant. I’m continually fascinated by the product decisions to make updates on a certain timescale, and how we communicate them to our customers. There’s no single approach, but maintaining an open, thoughtful approach is by far the best way to keep customer trust even if a particular update goes awry.
- 1Let’s not fight over who’s at fault for the prevalence of new textbook editions or their cost. I’m typically quite impressed by the forewords I see in many math textbooks comparing editions, and believe much of the time a new edition is worthwhile.
- 2Assuming they can keep it in print enough that students can obtain it. That’s a separate problem.
- 3Again, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.
- 4There is still the problem of communicating to your audience that an older version had a problem, and to make sure to get the newer version.
- 5The biggest change here was moving to \KaTeX for math rendering.