At the last RATS meeting we discussed things that students could look for as they preview a book. One thing that was mentioned concerned figures and such. I noted that my students had commented on the fact that it is very confusing when an explanation to a figure, or other illustration, reads on a different page than the illustration. Finding these and many other discrepancies, small and not so small, has been a project in our program for some time and recently went to a new level that my students were part of.
When students get familiar with their text and become efficient at applying the content, they pick up on errors in the technical aspects. This started me on a path of encouraging the students to watch for errors and typos a few years back. It has become a positive challenge to some of them and they really get into it. We have noticed that some of the corrections I have submitted to the publishers, starting from Ed. 2 through the current Ed. 4 , have been acted upon. My new group has found additional errors which prompted me to send another letter off to our new publisher's rep. prompting him to relay that communication to his superiors. I was very surprised and delighted to recieve an email directly from the author thanking both myself and my students for their efforts and promising to include all our corrections in Ed 5. He also sent me his newly created powerpoint on the text and gave his permission to use it, copy it and distribute it in any way that I felt was beneficial.
Paul Baeder (ratified)
MART Program
