Monday, June 11, 2007

Survey

In my calculus class this fall (250 students, no graders) I'm going to be using the online homework system that comes with new textbooks (and can be purchased separately by students with used textbooks). I have two choices of which online system to use:
  1. The system that is designed for our textbook. It has the online homework, access to tutoring, and an eBook edition of the textbook.
  2. The system that is designed for the new edition of our textbook. It has online homework, access to tutoring, the Dana Moseley calculus videos, and an eBook of the new edition. From what I can tell, the revised eBook is nearly identical. Some typos have been fixed, and a few of the homework problems have been renumbered.
Which one should I use? Is it important to have the eBook that is exactly the same as the printed book? (The "homework" assigned from the textbook is not graded, just occasionally spot checked for existence / effort. I could always make up a separate homework list for the eBook.) Is that more or less important than having access to the videos? Since the system is run via Blackboard, I can assign the videos and check to see if they've watched them. Any advice?