Comments on: Rent-a-Textbook

By: lhes

lhes — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:58:49 +0000

I still have stacks of text books lying around that I rarely use anymore, I’ve been thinking about renting them out to students in my local area (probably for free). I was going to post them on rentnotbuy.org, or one of the site like it. Has anyone tried that? It might save some local student a few bucks…

By: Melanie McBride

Melanie McBride — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 02:36:31 +0000

I’ve come to believe that the traditional textbook cultivates a very passive relationship with knowledge. Students anticipate the use of a textbook in any course. A book that is essentially somebody else’s aggregate of the particular subject. This is convenient but also very concerning. Particularly in relation to a students sense of agency and curiosity around any particular subject. In addition to a boring presentation of content, this robs the student of the opportunity to be a hunter gatherer of information – and to dig deeper into contexts that may not even be spoken to in a particular textbook. This is why I advocate the use of social bookmarks as a mandatory component of my courses. Many students resent being asked to find course related information – they say that’s my job. Again, this is the result of years of conditioning to be passive consumers of knowledge and information. I’m not suggesting that our students are not, by nature, curious. But that it’s been worn out of them by a traditional model of knowledge that reinforces transmission over transformation.

By: MC Smith

MC Smith — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:05:29 +0000

Chegg and other textbook rentals seem like a good deal, until you check their pricing and find that the costs are similar to that of purchasing a new text and there are additional charges if you need to keep the book for, say, an additional week (for Finals), which puts the price at that or above the textbook price. I was willing to give Chegg a shot when my college freshman son and I got online to order his books — but, frankly, the cost and convenience of buying books from the University bookstore beat Chegg all to hell.

By: alexa harrington

alexa harrington — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:17:06 +0000

Yes, I’ve also heard that Chegg.com plants a tree for every book you rent, which is a happy bonus. I’m always on board with any plan to thwart the textbook publishers, whether there’s tree planting involved or not.

By: Eric Hanson

Eric Hanson — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:09:56 +0000

Any thoughts on how this applies to distance learning? A huge cost for DL reuse of the textbooks. If we take an image from a text then essentially the students must own the text. If we rent the image and take down the course at the end of the year we could really drive down costs for a course – I think…

By: Brandon Mendelson

Brandon Mendelson — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 02:14:38 +0000

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned them, but Chegg.com lets you rent textbooks and then plants a tree each time you do. I used their services last year around this time for a course and, aside from issues sending the book back (you need a laser printer to print their return label), they were great.