Yet Another Bad Thing That Big Textbook Publishers Do
September 14, 2010
(We’re big fans of what the team at Flat World Knowledge is up to. Every success that a next-generation textbook publisher has—and lately, FWK has had a lot—validates the model for all of us. This is an example of them not doing the bad things the traditional publishers do.)
As we mentioned in our earlier post, Flat World Knowledge has released a new graphic novel textbook, Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed. There are some good (and not so good) points made by the commenters over at Inside Higher Ed.
The criticisms went along these lines:
- A comic book textbook is dumbing things down.
- Putting a textbook into story format has been done before.
- It doesn’t supply the wealth of pedagogical options that a traditional 900 lb. textbook can offer.
- The book isn’t modular, and the narrative flow means professors have to structure their courses around the book.
To which we respond…
- That’s just silly. If it helps students learn the covered material, shouldn’t that be what matters?
- True: it’s not unprecedented, and it’s still a great idea.
- True: it’s not for every subject and every student.
- True: it’s not for every professor, either.
The fact that it’s not for everyone doesn’t make Atlas Black less valuable; it makes it more valuable. Bravo to the author, Jeremy Short, for not writing another one-size-fits-all book. Whether it’s a graphic novel textbook or just a book with an honest-to-goodness point of view, it’s high time someone injected some variety into this industry.
Industry Consolidation = Milquetoast Textbooks
Before the industry consolidation began in the 90s, some fields were served by upwards of a dozen titles. Professors had lots of choices when selecting tiles. Nowadays it’s not unusual for one book to command 50% share.
That’s not because the market demanded it; professors weren’t screaming, “Help! Give me fewer choices!” No, it was industry economics that drove the consolidation in the number of publishers and number of titles. (We’ve heard some great off-the-record stories about how the big publishers have intentionally spent more money to raise the barriers to entry and squeeze out competition.)
The Textbook Problem: Professors Need More Choices, Students Need Less Expensive Books
So Atlas Black does help solve the Textbook Problem, but perhaps not in the way its author intended. Sure, a graphic novel textbook might be more interesting to read, but what’s more important is that it offers professors an option they didn’t have before, and, owing to FWK’s pricing model, affordably puts a pretty bad-ass book into students’ hands.
That’s our mission here at Eleven Learning: our business model is about offering more choices to professors. You’ll see that in the coming months.
Oh, and mark my words: you should expect to soon see a Clone Army of graphic novel textbooks from the big publishers.
September 14, 2010 at 12:08 pm
This kind of textbook has shown up elsewhere, also:
http://nostarch.com/catalog/manga
This series is a bit more casual, but the stats book is still solid.
September 24, 2010 at 2:55 pm
OK. I’m an old guy, and I do think it’s probably dumbing it down. But I don’t think that flaw is in the graphical presentation, but rather in the fact that it is a narrative.
In fairness, I owe the authors a fuller investigation before I spout off, but time is short and ill-informed spouting is easier.
I suspect that (if) when I examine this text, I’ll discover that it probably proceeds in story format / that it has a structured thread: We started here and went there proceeding according to some logic.
I suspect that most of the world in which future managers will have to function isn’t that structured. Faced honestly, there is a lot of debate about causality / logics (and about preference structures). And that a more truthful presentation would have to tell many stories — at least some of which would flat-out contradict each other.
This may approximate the problem of teaching with simulations. Any simulation that is a good teaching device isn’t realistic: So any simulation that trains the puppy by reliably rewarding its correct behaviors doesn’t accurately mimic the randomness (and occasional betrayal) of the real world. And any simulation that is realistic is such a blooming, buzzing confusion, that only the most insightful of students will ever be able to deduce what it is that they were supposed to learn.
September 24, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Fred, thanks for your comments.
Every textbook embodies a series of compromises, and you’ve done a nice job of describing the ones that the author and editors of Atlas Black made. I’ve flipped through the book—we link to it in the blog post, in case you want to do that same—and I can confirm your suspicions. The author occasionally takes a break from the story to offer an anecdote or flesh things out, but it’s not an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand kind of book.
All teaching methods involve tradeoffs. You’ve dug a grave for simulations; I’m sure you could do the same for case-based instruction, too.
I’m not a professor of management, so I’m in no position to judge how suitable the graphic novel format is for this discipline. However, I think it’s great that professors, and not acquisitions editors, will be the ones who will make that decision.