Benefits of moving away from textbooks

Hello all those interested in OER, my name is Shelli Jordan-Zirkle and I teach U.S. History courses at Everett Community College for the ORCA program as well as main campus classes. My goal has been to save students from purchasing expensive history textbooks that don’t exactly teach students the skills I want them to get out of history classes. Instead of using textbooks that summarize time periods, I use many primary sources (documents from the time) that students read and respond to. This enhances critical thinking skills that are central to my course learning objectives. Instead of reading about historical time periods in a textbook, students get to do history with the actual sources and artifacts from each time period. It saves students money and enhances critical thinking.