Do Your Students Really Need that $200 Ebook? Predatory Publishers and Ethical Questions

摘要

Textbook costs have risen 1041% since 1977 (Popken, 2015). The internet allows educators to create and disseminate educational resources and to share the wealth and the creations using special licenses. The research is now in, and open educational resources, or OERs, have been shown to have just as good as, and sometimes better, learning outcomes than standard publisher materials. To keep profits flowing, publishers have designed impressive software packages marketed as superior to standard textbooks. For a hefty price tag, students are promised superior, adaptive, and even miraculous learning experiences while the instructor languishes in the background. This paper asks the question, what are we selling students, and what are we losing for ourselves as teachers in this educational material jungle.