How to read a textbook for distance learning coursework - do I need to work on fact recall, or is understanding enough?

It might helpful to change the question slightly, into

What is the purpose of writing a textbook?

Usually a textbook is written to lay out a fairly well codified body of knowledge about a topic. The "well codified" part is important: it's expected that this body of knowledge has some lasting value. The textbook is also written (hopefully) in a way that *teaches this knowledge, as opposed to merely dumping it out.

To me it sounds like the book you're reading is of the second kind (a dump of facts). Such a textbook is better treated as a reference book, like a dictionary. No one reads a dictionary (unless they're trying to pass the GRE or win a spelling bee :)), but they will refer to it to get the meanings of words.

Similarly, with a book that describes 35 problem solving methods, maybe reading it cover to cover isn't the best strategy. Rather, you should focus on a few techniques (or even one) and try to understand that well. Then put the book away and revisit it from time to time.

So to answer your question:

A textbook can be a collection of facts, but often it's more than that: it's a path through the facts that provides a structure with which to process the facts. The goal of reading (and learning) is to acquire both the facts AND the structure. The facts will be easier to remember if you have the structure in place, and the structure makes more sense with the facts as examples.

The answer to your question is that there is no point in "brute forcing" through a text book in this manner, unless you're cramming for an examination.

Do not read textbooks in this way, especially if you do not own them. If you borrow a textbook from the library, and then read it cover to cover, and not remember anything, that is a waste of time.

Good textbooks are worth owning, which implies that they will be in your possession for years. You can use them for reference, and study them over the years in piecemeal fashion as your wandering interest returns to the topics from time to time.

If you really want to absorb the material in your textbook, you must do the chapter exercises. You can give yourself a course by going through the book, or you can spread this over years.

Maybe the book is a real tour de force on the subject matter and requires a lot of commitment, such that if you put in the commitment, you become an authority on those problem-solving methods. Is that something you want for yourself, though?

The important thing to memorize from your textbooks is just enough of a summary of the ideas that when you encounter some idea in the world, you can remember which of your textbooks has something to say about that topic.

For instance, this book, let's call it Foobley and Bings, has 35 problem-solving methods. Can you remember enough about the gist of the methods so that when you see a problem, you can think "Aha! This problem has a general pattern which fits one of the problem-solving methods in Foobley and Bings." Even if you don't remember the details of the problem-solving method, this can be a big time saver, and the fact that you recognize the pattern shows that you have knowledge. (Even Foobley and Bings themselves may have to crack open their own book to solve that same problem, if they haven't touched the material in years. Maybe the wrote the book to "unload" it from their brains to "make room" for something else, while having something to refer to.)

There are many many different types of textbooks, and they have very different goals. Off the top of my head, I can list the following three main kinds:

• Coursework book, used as reference material for learning a rather broad topic. You expect it to bring a general introduction of the techniques in one field, broad overview, enough to understand the challenges in the field, identify the most common solutions and be able to work them on your own. This will surely include many problem sets, with or without solutions. It is also typical for this type of book to “highlight” some of the content, which the author deem essential for the reader to learn.

• “State of the art” book. They can be very different in scope, content and style of presentation. They exist to give a summary of the extent of knowledge on a given topic. They are written for experts and wannabe-experts, so more attention is usually given to correctness than than pedagogy. Such work is useful not only because of the text itself, but also because it usually offers a large number of references to seminal and important papers in the field, which offer you a good way to get started. As such, they're also useful to people who are already experts, they give good references for common knowledge (“hey, I know it was established in the 1980’s that co-enzyme X accounts for a nontrivial part of this metabolic pathway, but I wonder who did that work… let's check”).

• Reference book. In the most extreme case, it's like a dictionary: examples of such are the Abramowitz and Stegun or the CRC Handbook. Those are not usually called “textbooks”. This is not something you're supposed to read from A to Z, but rather open when you have need.

In the first two cases, if the textbook includes problem sets (or exercises), you should do them. For real, without looking at the answers until you're finished. If you're stuck, give it some time, then come back. Don't give up. This is where you'll learn the most.