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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I’ve had this problem the 25 years I’ve done this job, and I am curious if it’s a problem for others as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">It’s the middle of the winter quarter. The Spring quarter starts April 6.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">One of my more diligent students loves getting her books on time, so she’s learned to make the alt media request early.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">The publisher wants either a receipt or information about the full name of the course, what date the book was purchased and where, and how much was paid for the book.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Now our bookstore hasn’t even begun to stock books for Spring quarter. My student got her information by bugging the department dean mercilessly until she got a book list for her Spring course.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I would like to reward such dedication by having her book early, but she has to actually purchase the book before I can get a PDF to be remediated.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">The big barrier is the academic freedom that allows our instructors to make last-minute decisions about the books they plan to use for a course. I have talked to faculty about this relentlessly and I am simply
ignored.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I can do simple remediations myself but the service I use for anything complex wants the books early, and they prefer a syllabus so for example if they do Braille, they only transcribe/emboss required portions
of a book. But I never see a reading list if I’m lucky until the second week of the 12-week quarter, primarily because instructors like to get a feel for the class first before issuing a reading list. And many instructors decide on the fly what to read next
week and never issue an assignments list. Over 50 per cent of our teaching faculty is adjunct and hard to track down at the best of times too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">This is community college, so maybe it’s less of an issue at the university level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">--Debee<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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