Student Development of Class Notes using a Wiki as an Alternative to a Single Course Textbook

How often do we as faculty members complain about the textbook?Not to mention the complaints we get from our students.Yet, the first thing we often do when planning a course is select a textbook.Selecting and relying on a single text tends to be teacher-centered and content-driven.A more learner-center, objective-driven approach is easier today given the availability of digital resources and collaborative tools.As an alternative to requiring a textbook for a senior-level mechanics course, the students are creating a set of notes as a class using the wiki function in Blackboard.Through this process the students will: Synthesize information from different texts and resources, and Collaboratively create a set of notes that they can use for quizzes and the final exam (and later in their careers).The students are working in groups.Each group is responsible for a separate section (the sections include: General Discussion, Theory and Equations, Definitions, Concept Map, and Example) of the class notes for each of five separate units of the course.Each person in the group is required to select a different reference(s) and draft the section individually; the group then evaluates the individual sections and combines them to create a single section, which they post to the class wiki.In addition to digital resources available to the students through Blackboard, I have placed several textbooks on reserve at the library.Student responses so far have been mixed.In addition to midterm and end-of-term surveys related to the effectiveness of this approach, I am tracking student usage of the digital resources.A comparison of the class notes developed by individual students with those developed by the groups allows me to assess the contributions of the individuals and the changes in quality affected by the group process.