Instruction

Empirical research on pedagogy has exploded in the last 20 years. We know a great deal about how people learn effectively, and the evidence overwhelming shows that other textbooks are doing it all wrong.

Students are often told to read pages of boring text before coming to class, and we wonder why they didn't do it or didn't learn anything. Every feature of our textbook is based on empirically supported pedagogy.

Students Are Changing

In education, technology itself is neither good nor bad. What matters is how we use it. The phones in your students' pockets are a perfect example: they can be constantly distracting or deeply enriching.

We embrace mobile platforms because students are adept at learning about the world through their phones. They use social media and play games that reward daily use. We build the same idea into the textbook, which has achievements and streak-tracking built in.

These activities are entirely optional for students, which develops intrinsic motivation and good habits, or instructors can use them for extra credit opportunities.

Accessibility

All our exercises have captioning and alt-text accessibility built in, and we follow best practices of header tags and numerous sectioning. We are committed to making our textbook fully accessible, so if you have any needs or questions, just let us know.

Software

Students are often more tech savvy than we are, yet we place obstacles to their learning with outdated and poorly designed software. We have seen dozens of classes express frustration with traditional textbooks and software.

Our software requires no instructions. Any student that can use email and a web browser has the skills to use our text.

Prices

Education is too expensive. Students struggle with debt, yet companies publish new editions of the same textbooks so they can charge hundreds of dollars per student, sometimes even adding fees for software or mobile apps. For a large lecture class our book costs $4 per student.