There are several ways to present content to your students. You could ask them to read the textbook (kind ‘o boring). The first thing that I would want a teacher to give to me is a good fiction book that gets the point across. Why? Because I love to read fiction. However, when teaching I have to take into consideration that we all learn differently and we all need several options to learn the same content. Not everyone likes to read long novels about a silly metaphor about life (BTW The Life of Pi was great and I learned a lot) or read complicated textbooks.
Therefore, I usually give several options to my students. Here is a screen shot from one of the CMS /LMS I use to teach ethics:
There are so many ways to learn the content.I don’t limit the students to just one. I do encourage them to use all of them. Often I tell the student which one to start with based on how that particular student learns. I also suggest that they start backward and read the challenge for the week first. This way they will know why they need to know what they need to know to accomplish the challenge.
The point is that students need different material to meet their needs, simply because in the end we do want them to learn.
~Mia
An Ethical Island 