What did you learn?

What are 2 or 3 things that “stuck” and you think you’ll continue to use?

I have often ‘struggled’ with textbooks while teaching English for Academic Purposes/English as a Second Language, since no one text can truly meet the needs of students, or even meet established course outcomes. I also believe in using authentic materials as much as possible, so I always find myself searching for other materials to either enhance or replace what is in the assigned text. I’ve taught a number of courses where I believe that the purchased text should be eliminated altogether because it is minimally useful. However, I’m also conscious that students have paid a lot of money for their textbooks (and remember doing so myself) and so try to use them sufficiently during a course.

Having had a chance to search for and source OER and also see texts created by colleagues, I’m more convinced than ever that, given enough time for development, faculty could create course-specific texts that are far superior to printed texts, and that could be updated and expanded easily to keep them current. The challenge now is to carve out the time to make it happen!