The Soils Textbook in the Age of Moocs and Flipped Classrooms?.

Just when we thought that textbooks were about to go extinct, along come exciting new University teaching models that depend more – not less - on out of class materials, including textbooks, to provide the basic course “content”. To effectively engage in active learning in the classroom, students need to come to class with the background information and basic concepts already acquired “at home” from “the textbook”. Even for traditional lecture courses, the textbook can be essential to reinforcing lectures, delivering information, fostering learning and integrating diverse topics in a cohesively presented body of knowledge.  It is probably premature to write the obituary for paper textbooks, but with e-books becoming the norm and pedagogy in college science education undergoing major changes, it is fair to ask  “what do we want in a 21st century soils textbook?” Must it be readable on an i-pad screen? Will serious students still need permanent access for their “reference shelf”? Should it be “dumbed down” to meet minimum mastery or “bulked up” to provide flexibility and interconnectedness? Should it be a modular collection or an integrated whole?