How useful are internet resources?

Over and over again, college students have told us that they just don't use the computerized 'stuff' that publishers provide with their textbooks. The words "pointless" and "useless" get thrown around by college students when describing these resources.

So why do publishers continue to spend (your!) good money on these? Because they aren't meant to help students, that's why.

Publishers are in business to sell textbooks, period. Their whole business model revolves around convincing your instructor that their book is best. But since every publisher's Chemistry textbook is pretty much the same, they fall back on the old 'we have more stuff to go with the book' approach.

It doesn't matter if their computerized 'stuff' is useless, as long as they have it that's one more checkmark for your instructor.

I have a confession to make -- I spent some time producing these sorts of resources for two of the three major publishers. I know what motivated the folks I worked for, and tried like hell to make the 'stuff' I produced actually be of use (despite their efforts to the contrary).

Now that I'm with College-Cram, I am finally able to produce useful resources. Our Cramlets aren't meant to convince the instructor to use a textbook because we don't publish textbooks.

Our Cramlets have to be useful, and over the past six semesters we've heard college students tell us loud and clear -- they are!