Digital curriculum has become a popular option for many career and technical education (CTE) programs. As a continually updated solution with many interactive features, many educators find digital curriculum to be an adaptable solution to today's CTE classrooms.
But while thousands of programs have adopted digital curriculum, other teachers and administrators prefer to stick with traditional textbooks.
If you're looking to choose a curriculum for your new course, or are planning to update your existing curriculum, it's important to choose the right instructional materials for your students.
Overall, there are four major aspects to consider when choosing between textbooks and digital curriculum:
- Ease of implementation
- Student engagement
- Accuracy of information
- Differentiation
In this article, we’ll put compare textbooks head to head with digital curriculum in each category. After reading, you should have a more complete understanding of what both offer to choose which is best for your particular program and students.
Category 1: Ease of Implementation
When deciding on a new instructional resource, one of the most important aspects to consider is how easily you’ll be able to implement it in your classroom.
This is especially true for CTE instructors who haven’t taught before and for districts and schools who are implementing an entirely new course or CTE pathway.
A straightforward implementation means that you'll spend less time setting up quality learning experiences and more time meeting your instructional goals.
So how do textbooks and digital curriculum measure up?
Implementing Textbooks
A textbook is one of the most comfortable options for CTE teachers. That’s because many teachers learned from textbooks themselves.
Textbooks are also very straightforward. With a physical book, your course content is clearly segmented into united and chapters focused on conveying specific topics and skills. This makes it easy as an instructor to jump in and start using a textbook very quickly.
However, when using a textbook, you’ll also need to consider how many additional materials you’ll need. While some textbooks include extra resources like student workbooks or even supplementary online materials, this isn't true of every product on the market. For some, you may wind up paying for the textbook alone, without additional resources. This could be a high price to pay in today's market, where the cost of printed materials continues to rise.
Depending on the book you choose, you may also need to spend extra time creating classroom resources to actually teach your lessons and assess student learning. This could mean anything from building projects and activities from scratch to spending hours on the internet in the search of the right supplementary materials for your students.
Implementing Digital Curriculum
A digital curriculum offers an entirely different experience from a conventional textbook. They are designed to be intuitive and easy to use for any CTE teacher, and often come with customer service to help your school integrate the resources.
But it can be intimidating to use a digital resource if you’ve never done so before! When compared with a textbook, using a new digital curriculum platform could have a bit more of a learning curve.
However, when compared with traditional textbooks, digital curriculum is typically more comprehensive. Within the platform, you'll find every tool and resource you’ll need to teach your CTE courses. This includes lesson plans, class activities, rubrics, assessments, automatic grading tools, and more.
Though it will take a little time to learn the ins-and-outs, these resources can ultimately make the overall implementation much easier. Plus, your curriculum provider will typically provide onboarding and customer service, ensuring you and your team will be able to get up to speed much more quicky.
With the abundance of resources digital curriculum developers provide, implementation and support can be much easier than you anticipated.
Which Is Easier to Implement?
Ultimately, which type of CTE curriculum you consider easier to implement depends on your flexibility with adopting different types of materials and the time you wish to spend in the shorter and longer term.
Most educators already know how you to use textbooks in their classrooms, and their chapter-and-lecture approach is a familiar one in many schools. However, implementing this curriculum can be costly in terms of the purchase price of materials and the time it takes to locate and incorporate additional materials.
On the other hand, digital curriculum presents the initial learning curve of understanding a new platform, but also comes with an abundance of resources and customization features that can make your life in the classroom easier in the long run.
Category 2: Student Engagement
Time and again, CTE teachers and administrators share that one of their biggest challenges for CTE teachers is keeping students engaged.
Student engagement is an ongoing challenge that requires continual adaptation. Often, it's hard to pinpoint what does and does not work when engaging students.
However, you can improve engagement by using a variety of teaching strategies and blended learning. Choosing a curriculum that supports you in providing an engaging experience to students can make a significant difference in your ability to ensure students are focused, learning, and prepared for career success.
So when it comes to blended learning strategies to increase engagement, how do your options stack up?
Engaging Students with Textbooks
Textbooks take a straightforward approach to student engagement. Since the materials are generally text and lecture focused, it's incumbent on the teacher to provide most or all of the student engagement experience.
Over the past few decades, textbooks have followed a familiar format for presenting content. Books are organized into chapters which include a large amount of text, diagrams, and application questions. While some textbooks include teaching and activity suggestions, they tend to rely on a teaching format where students read the textbook and the teacher reviews the material in class.
Though all of the information you want to teach is there, reading page after page can become monotonous for even your most attentive students.
More recently, some publishers have offered online versions of the textbooks and even some digital activities, but these are typically considered supplementary to the primary text. Even if you use these related resources, you may find yourself needing to create many materials on your own to keep learners engaged.
Engaging Students with Digital Curriculum
At its core, digital curriculum is designed to be interactive and engaging for every student. Instead of presenting content in a single, text-driven format, digital curriculum engages students through interactive lessons, multimedia presentations, engaging projects and activities, and formative and summative assessments.
These resources are designed to provide a blended learning experience, engaging learners through critical thinking and scenario-based learning exercises.
However, working with a digital curriculum still requires instructors to be proactive in teaching course content. Students won't be engaged when teachers use only digital lessons and avoid interactive activities that allow learners to engage with course material.
Using all of the elements of a digital curriculum together allows students to experience the benefits of blended learning, where individuals are exposed to a variety of instructional strategies to teach and reinforce critical concepts.
Which Is More Engaging?
When it comes to keeping students engaged, digital curriculum is the clear winner.
While there are many ways to make textbook content engaging, it requires significant effort from individual teachers to ensure that the material is engaging. This means continually supplementing written text with engaging presentations and activities that capture their attention.
On the other hand, digital curriculum includes a wide range of engaging materials that you can implement from the start. Although it's still critical that teachers use their resources to ensure an engaging instructional environment, the materials they need are already included in their curriculum, saving them time and allowing them to focus more on providing the best classroom experience possible.
The variety of opportunities offered by digital curriculum ultimately make it a better choice if you're looking to engage students through multiple touchpoints and increase their enthusiasm for your course material.
Category 3: Accuracy of Information
Providing up-to-date information is a critical aspect of effective career and technical education. This is particularly vital in ever-changing industries like healthcare and information technology, where learning the latest concepts and standards makes a major difference in students' readiness to work in their fields of choice.
For these reason, it's important to evaluate the accuracy of your instructional materials and any new materials you are considering for your program. Outdated curriculum can be expensive to replace, so it's important to recognize how relevant your materials will be for the foreseeable future.
Accuracy of Textbooks
When textbooks are first written, they’re one of them most relevant, up-to-date teaching resources out there. But because textbooks are only printed once, they can become outdated very quickly!
To overcome this, some textbook publishers publish new versions of their books on a regular basis. This is great in theory, but it means you’ll have to purchase new books every single year if you want the latest information.
However, most textbooks aren’t updated on a yearly basis. In fact, many popular CTE textbooks are only updated once every several years.
This means you'll need to continually verify the accuracy of textbook information to ensure the content meets your standards.
Ultimately, textbooks often contain large amounts of excellent, accurate information. But even the best textbooks go out of date. When using a textbook, you'll need to review it each year and inform your students of any incorrect information.
Accuracy of Digital Curriculum
One of the biggest benefits of digital curriculum is its flexibility as an online resource. As a digital platform, curriculum materials can be updated at any point, ensuring that they're always accurate and meet your standards.
Because of how digital curriculum is built, updates are seamlessly integrated without any interruption for teachers or students. That means there’s no need to purchase a new version or install an update, as the materials will be continually updated to account for changes in your CTE pathway.
Updates are most commonly made when a course standard, certification exam, or technology changes.
In addition, if a teacher finds an error (anything from a typo to a missing image) the curriculum can be corrected in a snap! There's no need to wait until the next printing to ensure everyone has the most accurate information for each CTE course and career pathway.
Which Option Is More Up-to-Date?
Overall, digital curriculum is more up-to-date than textbooks.
Though new editions of textbooks are published, sometimes the time between editions can be years.
On the flip side, digital curriculum can be updated quickly without additional costs to CTE programs. Whenever a new update is published, teachers and students have full access to the materials as a part of their subscription.
If you’re concerned about providing the most up to date information to your classes, digital curriculum will probably be your best choice. But if you teach a class that doesn’t change much year to year, a textbook could be sufficient.
Regardless, it's important to be aware of changes to your state standards to ensure you're meeting requirements in your daily instruction.
Category 4: Differentiation
CTE teachers often have classes filled with students who have different learning styles and knowledge.
To ensure all students succeed, it’s paramount that teachers implement differentiated instruction strategies that account for the needs of individual learners. While differentiation is not always easy, your ability to adapt curriculum to your students' needs can make a serious difference in their ability to achieve learning goals.
Below, we'll look at what it's like to use textbooks and digital curriculum for differentiated instruction.
Using Textbooks for Differentiated Instruction
Some teachers find textbooks can serve as a great base for a few types of differentiation.
One of the most common ways to differentiate with a textbook is flipping the classroom. This involves students reading the book at home, taking notes, and jotting down questions about what they’ve read. Then in class, you’ll summarize what was read, answer questions, and go more in-depth with the material.
You can also go further and create a hands-on activity to reinforce what your students have learned.
However, you may find that you need to create a number of additional materials beyond the textbook to truly differentiate instruction for your students.
Then again, the comprehensive nature of textbooks can still serve as an excellent basis for individualizing instruction for students.
Using Digital Curriculum for Differentiated Instruction
CTE teachers have found an abundance of ways to differentiate their instruction with digital curriculum.
Some of the most common strategies include:
- Allowing students to work at their own pace
- Assigning lessons based on skill level
- Using modifications and accommodations when appropriate
On top of these teaching strategies, digital curriculum provides lesson narration, transcripts, and other features to help English language learners and special populations students better master material.
Which Curriculum Provides Better Differentiation?
Both textbooks and digital curriculum provide ways for any teacher to differentiate. And because differentiated instruction involves individualizing your lessons to meet the needs of your learners, one or the other may work better in your classroom.
Ultimately, it comes down to the comfort level of each teacher and student in working with text-based versus digital materials to meet student needs.
In general, using multiple methods to differentiate instruction can lead to a better learning experience, so you'll want to consider how you can vary your text-based learning with other projects and activities that will help your students learn.
Digital Curriculum vs. Textbooks - Which Is Better?
In this article, you've learned about four of the biggest distinguishing factors between textbooks and digital curriculum. But which of these curriculum options is the best fit for CTE students?
At the end of the day, deciding whether to use digital curriculum or textbooks depends on your goals for your CTE program.
If you're looking to use a single, reading-based volume as the basis for most of your instruction, a textbook could suit your program. You can use a reading and lecture format as the basis of your instruction and supplement it with additional activities as needed.
However, if your main priority is engaging students through multiple teaching strategies for a blended learning experience, digital curriculum could be a better choice. Implementing digital curriculum provides you with a comprehensive teaching platform that includes multimedia lessons and engaging projects and activities for your students.
Could digital curriculum be the right the choice for your CTE students? Discover the iCEV digital curriculum in a free live demo!
During your demo, you'll learn more about iCEV and how it helps administrators, teachers, and students in 11 subject areas achieve their goals.
Specifically, you'll learn about:
- The topics you can teach with iCEV
- What resources are available to engage and instruct learners
- The teaching challenges you face and how iCEV can solve them
- How you’ll be supported by the iCEV team
Sign up for a live demo today to learn how iCEV can make a difference in your CTE program!
