The power of textbook: an experimental approach

An observation arising from my teaching of the Biochemistry class is that students rarely possess personal copies of the textbook. Instead students reply heavily on teachers’ Powerpoint slides as the main source of course content which are not sufficient for their learning. This project aims to provide invaluable information about the impact of textbook on students’ learning experience and learning outcome. Using the classes of Biochemistry of 2016 and 2017 as the subject, an experimental approach is employed to study the power/benefit of textbook possession. A few copies of the Biochemistry textbook will be loaned to a portion of the class. Students’ learning experience will be assessed by surveys and their learning outcome, in terms of coursework and exam results, will be compared with that of previous years. This project is expected to provide hard evidence about the benefit of textbook access. The results could influence teachers’ choice of textbook and students’ decision on whether to purchase a textbook.