While I was having dinner with my ex-colleague, another lecturer, we were having a debate over the use of textbooks for undergraduate studies. I got so engaged in this debate because before I went for the dinner today, I just told a few of my current students (Gen-Y) about the importance and usefulness of reading academic textbooks.
Personally, I always think that one of the best way to improve on academic writing is to start with reading the subject related textbooks. Althought there are various alternatives for readings, such as online journals, websites and even blogs; these are all good to have alternatives for reference purposes but it is not the core materials and blogs cannot be used as academic reference.
I agree that some of these alternatives sources may be easily accessible and very looks informative but the scope can be very wide too as there are uncountable websites when searching by keywords. Also, a lot of web publishers simplify the subject information to make it easy to read, keeping it short and simple. By doing so, it will only provide some points or even without appropriate explanation on any concepts or models.
Web sources can be very specific on explaning some terms, concepts or models that myay provide limited elaboration or justification. Many web authors simply extract points from textbooks (in note form), similar to a student taking their notes in the class or while reading a text.
In this circumstances, how can a student learn the subject matters properly and able to see how the topic area can be explained or elaborated? Therefore, students only able to provide answers in point form and if essay is required, the student will just combine all the points they learned from the Internet in a paragraph, without taking into consideration the efforts of writing an essay.
At this point of time, I am not against the use of Internet as the medium for undergraduate studies. There are benefits of using the Internet for research or reading e-book too. However, how many students or even lecturers prefer to read e-book online and use the e-book as a main source of reference for assignment and preparing for exam? I am referring to academic e-books, not fictions or online magazine. Maybe there are some who prefer to do so, but how about you? Does your university or college provide e-books?
I belief the fundamental of learning comes from reading, and if it is for academic purpose, it should start from reading subject related textbook. This helps to build cognitive skills and expose the student to the fundamental academic writing style. Only when this is achieved, the student may go online to identify and read more sources to extent the knowledge and scope of the subject area. Textbooks provide definitions, explanations, implications, pros and cons, and illustration using valid examples, which are all critical for developing strong foundations of subject matters. Being in undergraduate means a student should build on the foundation of degree specialisation. To achieve this, there is no other better way but to read textbooks or e-books (as long as it is a published subject related book).
My philosophy is very simple. If someone want to think out of the box, this person should fill up the box with content before thinking out of the box. Think out of the box doesn't meant must go away from the box and never come back. A great mind can think out of the box only if this person has gained significant knowledge inside the box. If want to go to the world wide wide to look for answers for your studies, first thing to do is to understand the basic subject matters from textbooks, which are dedicated for teaching the subject purpose. This is the reason why textbooks still exist today (for a reason).
