How do you choose your assigned reading material?

What criteria do we use to select reading material for our courses? The choice of reading material, sometimes in the past confined to a good comprehensive textbook, is now enhanced by greater access to texts, journals and electronic media. This makes the decisions even harder and the need to have some criteria for choosing more important. A fundamental criterion we need to consider is the purpose of the reading material. Does it support and advance the objectives of the course? A single piece, usually a textbook, may be sufficient where the course objectives require mastery of a distinct body of information. Where the objectives require a broader understanding and critique of the information, the development of thinking skills and formation of personal opinions, multiple sources are necessary. The readings might be chosen to reinforce the lecture content or to elaborate on the content with examples, illustrations and applications. McKeachie (1994) recommends choosing a textbook which matches the instructor’s point of view and supplementing it with readings that complement yet offer differing perspectives from the instructor’s own. Other criteria to consider include cost, format, layout, clarity of content, comprehensiveness, accuracy and currency.

The choice of the reading material should also be guided by the instructor’s expectations of both the students’ reading abilities and the time involved in reading and assimilating the material with lecture material and other sources.

As part of the process of choosing our reading material, we need to consider how we will use the material in the course. The importance of our decision is perhaps best expressed by Kenneth Eble (1988) who says that ''since so much textbook reading is done under duress, reading ... may be one of the casualties of a college education'' (p. 130). He continues to say that

the teacher’s highest aims in respect to the use of texts may be those of not turning students away from reading, of illuminating the range of experience and pleasure that can come from the written word, and of keeping alive curiosity and a willingness to learn by whatever means the real world offers (p. 130).

Of course, the best reading material for my course is the textbook I wrote!

• Eble, K. E. (1988). The craft of teaching (2 nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• McKeachie, W.J. (1994). Teaching tips: Strategies, research and theory for college and university teachers (9th ed.). Lexington, Mass.: D.C Heath & Co.