Over The Edge Page 2 NEWS October 26, 1998 Textbook Prices Rise as Canadian Dollar Falls By Dana Schwehr Does it seem like you've been spending more for fewer text- books this year? Odds are you have. Don’t blame it on book- store bureaucracy, instead finger a shiftier culprit, the falling Canadian Dollar. According to Sandy Wray, the book buyer at the UNBC bookstore, most of the texts pur- chased by the school are American texts. Due to the fact that right now, the Canadian dol- lar is worth about sixty- five cents in comparison to the American dollar, the cost of American texts is going up. Even European books are priced against American currency, so again the school gets a poor exchange rate. The fact that many publishers are now amalgamating does not help matters. “Book prices are up about one and a half times,” Wray says. This is not good news for students, especially those in classes that require at least three texts. Texts published in Canada are not much cheaper, either. Due to the relatively lower number of students in Canada in comparison with the United States, there just isn’t the mar- ket for them. This again equals higher prices. The bookstore at UNBC is trying to help with the situation. They only charge a five-per- cent profit on their books, and they do not add_ shipping costs. Even in the case of books that need to be sent by courier, due to higher than expected class sizes, the extra cost is not added in. In Prince George, you have to take what you can get. There are no second hand textbook stores in town. The thrifty student could try book vendors on the Internet, but one has to be careful when dealing with such firms. Most FAMOUS PLAYERS Big Screen Big Sound Big Difference A VIACOM COMPANY Coming on Halloween Night, The Rocky Horror Picture Show ONE SHOWING ONLY AT MIDNIGHT. Purchase your tickets at the box office or Blimpies for only $6.00. Movie rated 18A prices are in American dollars, and shipping charges are extra. Sometimes textbooks can be found cheaper at the school bookstore simply because you do not have to pay for ship- ping. Most novels for the English classes can be found cheaper at general _ bookstores. Because _ publishers tend to give these stores better deals for buying more _ books, places such as Costco can sell books for far cheaper than anywhere else, but it is a “You buy what we have, not what you want” situation. This is not suited to a student's needs. Textbook prices are just another cost that could help to prevent Canadian students from getting an education. Sandy Wray put it quite bluntly; “It’s not good news, but no one is promising us any hope on the horizon.” Continued from Page 1 tant for all sides that an agreement has been reached that averts job action,” said Maura Parte, Canadian Federation of Students BC chairperson, “Thank you to the negotiators who worked through the night.” This deal means that CNC students’ can breath more easily as well, but there is still a chance of job action on their campus. The con- tentious issue of the Support Workers strike is still looming over their heads. The mood on campus is not as grim as it was before the educators’ agreement was reached. The cur- rent attitude is one of slight pessimism, as Jody Vanderboer, the Activities Coordinator of the CNC Student Association says, “There’s not much we can do about it. We just have to keep studying.” News of the aversion of the educators strike was also heralded with positive and negative enthusiasm by mem- bers of the community that use the facilities at CNC. “A strike at CNC would affect me miser- ably,” said Jay Brunn, a UNBC student who’s daughter, Jordyn, goes to the CNC daycare, “It would mean having to leave school until | found replacement day- care.” All residents of the CNC community can do now is wait for the other shoe to drop. New computer program marks university essays By Erin Fitzpatrick VANCOUVER -A psy- chology professor at New Mexico State University has devel- oped a software pro- gram that he says can mark the content of an essay and return it to the student with com- ments in less than a minute. The idea of being freed from hours of tedious marking has excited many acade- mics, but some worry the new program opens the door for computers to enter into the realm of human thought. Dr. Peter Koltz devel- oped the idea for a computer marker almost ten years ago when he was working with a colleague on a study of human memo- ry. “We were developing a model based on how humans interpret and remember text, when we realized we could give a computer the same ability,” he said. According to Dr. Koltz, computers can be taught to recognize key words and ideas in a text, and can then assign a mark to an essay depending on how many of those key concepts it finds in the paper. “You feed the com- puter sample texts on the topic,” he said. “The course textbook for example, and some sample essays that the professor has marked ahead of time, some done really well and others done poorly. Then the computer gets an idea of what to look for.” The program, said Koltz, would allow stu- dents to post their essays on the net and get them back within 30 seconds. “This is superior to the method we use now,” said Koltz, “where students get the paper back and don’t even look at the comment.” Some academics however, doubt the superiority of the new program. Roger Blackman, Simon Fraser’s associ- ate Dean of Arts, says that while SFU is not opposed to the idea of the Intelligent Essay Assessor he has some reservations. “What we should be interested in at a uni- versity are new ideas,” said Blackman. “lf a computer is marking based only on what's’ already out there, then ! would worry that the comput- er only helps the stu- dents learn to tow the party line.” There is the possibili- ty that if an essay did contain new concepts, the paper would fail because it lacked the standard lines from the textbook. But Dr. Koltz says he has put a mechanism in place to guard against this. “When there is an anomalous essay .. . or there are different words in it than there have been in the other papers, the computer puts up a red flag. It sends the essay to me and | look at it.” He added that the program is not intend- ed for creative essays, only expository ones. Dr. Koltz says he is currently using the pro- gram in one of his upper level psychology courses at New Mexico State, and that students have been happy with the results. “We did a survey, and of all 200 students, only one said he wouldn't want to use it.”