Stephanie Santos/The Cougar

Textbooks are the most widely used formats for studying in classes. While some in-class lectures include instructors guiding students to learn a new topic with presentation slides, there can still be a requirement to read textbooks.

Instructors not only have the responsibility to choose the pages for their students to read but also provide more learning materials like videos or even journal articles. 

UH also provides the Cougar Textbook Access Program to reduce the costs of textbooks per semester, by offering a fixed price of 299 plus 24.67 dollars of sales tax during a regular academic session.

However, some students express frustration reading textbooks due to several reasons like there is too much information given and not enough time to finish reading. 

Some even argue that not all students have the same attention spans or reading speeds. 

“I usually have an understanding of the subject,” said public relations junior Guadalupe Cortes. “But because I don’t have time, even to go over at least a couple of pages just to give me an idea on the topic, I do have trouble recalling the content.” 

In one of Cortes’ classes, she must read 30 pages on average from different textbooks every week to learn a new topic in her Introduction to Mexican American Studies class.

After reading, students must make a discussion post assignment based on what they learned and later do a peer review of another student’s response, making it time consuming. 

“Currently, I don’t have time to go over the textbook as it’s right at the most challenging part of my semester where I am being assigned to do major assignments, balancing my activities and having tests,” Cortes said. “I would rather use my time to go through the textbook and use it on my exam reviews.” 

In the same class, there are optional videos included that teach certain topics as well. 

For Cortes, she has a better learning experience watching the videos because she can understand more and retain the information better than reading in the textbooks. 

She relies on the textbook when assignments ask her to cite information from them. 

A piece of advice shared with college students is that they can skim through pages and find keywords, but this technique not work out for a lot of them. 

Attention and reading spans differ for each student. The overwhelming amount of information caused students to stress over what they must recall from their textbooks. 

“I would definitely stress and freak out if I had to read a textbook and complete quizzes,” said mechanical engineering junior Oscar Portillo. “It’s definitely an issue with my attention span since I lose interest really quickly.”  

A lot of extraneous information that isn’t covered in class is present in the textbook which won’t be covered in tests. Students find it mostly a waste of their time and causes extra stress, said electrical engineering senior Carlos Rincon. 

Portillo and Rincon wished that instructors could make changes so that it can be easier to rely on textbooks like giving summaries from them in classes or outline important parts for reading. 

For them, they had math, science and engineering classes where textbooks were reliable but felt they could be read optionally if they wanted to know more information. 

At UH, addressing students’ situations as feedback towards instructors can help academic learning like for Diana Pino, who is an instructor in one of the Introduction to Mexican American Studies classes. 

“There may have been a small number who have mentioned it in past course evaluations, but it has not been a recurring theme,” Pino said. “I do pay particular attention to the course evaluation question that asks students how the course compares to others they have taken in terms of the amount of work.” 

Pino provides videos and slides to reinforce her weekly modules like docu-series, YouTube videos and PowerPoint presentations that can be viewed on Canvas. 

“I appreciate the feedback and take it into consideration,” Pino said. “I know not all students feel comfortable providing feedback in person, so I always make it a point to carve out time in class at the end of the semester to allow students to complete the faculty evaluations while I step out of the room.”

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“‘I would definitely stress out’: Students demand for more interactive form of teaching” was originally posted on The Cougar