Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
External
Philosophical Ethics
George Matthews · George W. Matthews · 2020
This book is an introduction to philosophical ethics intended for use in introductory college or high school level courses. It has grown out of lecture notes I shared with the first students who took my online Ethics course at the Pennsylvania College of Technology almost 20 years ago. Since then it has seen more development in a variety of forms – starting out as a pdf document, and then evolving into a static set of WordPress pages and finally now as a book written in bookdown and hosted at GitHub. This text represents my attempt to scratch a couple of itches. The first is my wanting a presentation of the major philosophical approaches to ethics that I can actually agree with and that is integrated into my overall teaching method. I tend to teach philosophy to beginners and so there is a fair amount of discussion of the tools used by philosophers and of the ways in which their approach differs from that of their colleagues in other disciplines. There are of course many good quality ethics textbooks out there, and yet none has exactly matched my way of wanting to present the material. Teaching ethics over the years has been a process of active exploration and constant revision of my approach as I have come to a more nuanced and richer appreciation of what ethical thinking and theorizing is all about, as well as some ideas about how I think the main strands of argument relate to each other. Yes this is a partisan effort, but it’s all subject to revision and refinement based on, I hope at least, the better argument. That’s what I am trying to get across here. The second itch I am trying to scratch has to do with initiatives in open education, and I’d like this text to contribute in its own small way to the much larger and more influential open source movement and philosophy of which I consider it a part. Knowledge is only ours to share. Yes of course writers, developers and publishers do hard work that deserves compensation. But intellectual property, it seems to me,
External
Technical Writing @ SLCC
Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies · Salt Lake Community College · 2020
What is technical writing? You can think of it as writing about specialized topics or you could also think of it as using technology to communicate your ideas. A science lab report, a specification, a change order for building construction, or patient education materials–just to name a few–are all considered technical writing. Similarly if you design a webpage or a brochure this can also be considered technical writing. Academic writing, the writing you do for school, generally is informative or persuasive writing and usually only comes in a few different genres. In technical writing, on the other hand, one is often documenting what was done (such as a science experiment or auto repair invoice). Therefore the format of the writing is often as important as the content. This leads to an emphasis on usability and accessibility for your documents. Finally, although citing your sources is important in all writing, you will find that in some fields of technical writing, such as the sciences and engineering, it is one of the more important considerations of your writing.
External
Languages and Worldview
Manon Allard-Kropp · University of Missouri - St. Louis · 2020
Asking and answering questions about what culture entails and examines the fundamental properties and intertwining nature of language and culture. This text explores linguistic relativity, lexical differences among languages and intercultural communication, including high and low contexts. Changes to a variety of OER works were made by Manon Allard-Kropp in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies to tailor the text to fit the needs of the Languages and World View course at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Materials from the original sources have been combined, reorganized, and added to by the current author, and any conceptual or typographical errors are the responsibility of the current author.
External
Spanish I: Beginning Spanish Language and Culture
Matthew Dean · Humboldt State University Press · 2020
This peer-reviewed textbook is designed for the true beginner with U.S. college students in mind. It contains themed chapters, which are divided into 8 sections. Each section has its own set of learning objectives, and is further separated into three types of assignments, Para estudiar en casa (with detailed explanations), Para practicar en casa (homework exercises), and Para practicar en clase (paired and group classwork activities). The explanations and primary input are written to be easily comprehensible. The individual exercises are geared towards acquisition of form and function, and the communicative classwork exercises promote interpersonal exchanges between students. The digital copy includes some embedded audio files, and we are developing a website to house many more resources.
External
Arguing Using Critical Thinking
Jim Marteney · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2020
There is a quote that has been passed down many years and is most recently accounted to P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Are you that sucker? If you were, would you like to be “reborn?” The goal of this book is to help you through that “birthing” process. Critical thinking and standing up for your ideas and making decisions are important in both your personal and professional life. How good are we at making the decision to marry? According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is one divorce in America every 36 seconds. That is nearly 2,400 every day. And professionally, the Wall Street Journal predicts the average person will have 7 careers in their lifetime. Critical thinking skills are crucial. Critical thinking is a series learned skills. In each chapter of this book you will find a variety of skills that will help you improve your thinking and argumentative ability. As you improve, you will grow into a more confident person being more in charge of your world and the decisions you make.
External
The Western World: Daily Readings on Geography
Joel Quam; Scott Campbell · College of DuPage · 2020
In essay format, this textbook considers examples of various sub-categories of Geography in combination with five regions of the Western World.
External
Writing Unleashed: Content and Structure
Sybil Priebe; Ronda Marman; Dana Anderson · North Dakota University System · 2019
Welcome to Writing Unleashed, designed for use as a textbook in first-year college composition programs, written as an extremely brief guide for students, jam-packed with teachers’ voices, students’ voices, and engineered for fun.
External
Advanced Community College ESL Composition: An Integrated Skills Approach
Edgar Perez; Sara Behseta; Jenell Rae · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2020
This book has been created to provide a framework for building your skills in writing and critical thinking. It provides access to published samples from professional authors along with essay drafts from ESL students who have polished their skills in their respective writing courses. The themes in the readings will give you a variety of topics to discuss with your classmates, which may inspire your own deeper thinking and writing. Overall, we hope that as you proceed through these chapters, you will build confidence and develop your voice in the classroom and beyond. Welcome to the world of academic writing!
External
Elementary New Testament Greek
Joseph Dongell · First Fruits Press · 2014
The need for this particular grammar arises from the peculiar shape of the MDiv curriculum at Asbury Theological Seminary. Several years ago the faculty adopted a curriculum that required one semester of Greek and one semester of Hebrew, each as preparatory for a basic exegesis course in each discipline. It became clear after several years of trial and error that a “lexical” or “tools” approach to learning Greek and Hebrew was inadequate, no matter how skilled the instructors or how motivated the students. In today's general vacuum of grammatical training in public education across the United States, students typically enter seminary training with no knowledge of how languages work. Any training we might give them in accessing grammatical information through the use of Bible software programs will, we learned, come to naught in the absence of an understanding of just what such information actually means. We agreed that we actually needed to “teach the language itself,” at least in some rudimentary fashion, if we hoped students would make sense of grammatical and linguistic issues involved biblical interpretation. The first 12 chapters of this grammar are designed to correspond to the first semester's instructional agenda. In these chapters we introduce all the parts of speech, explain and drill the basic elements of grammar, set forth the larger verb system (excluding the perfect system), teach the tenses of the Indicative Mood only (again, excluding the perfect system), and help students build a vocabulary of all NT words occurring 100 times or more. We also lead students into the NT itself with carefully chosen examples, while at the same time guiding them in each lesson to learn the use of the standard NT lexicon [BDAG] and an exegetical grammar [Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics]. We are well aware of the limitations of this approach, but genuinely believe that some instruction along these lines is better than none, and that such an approach provide a fo
External
Chapeau! First-Year French
David Dinneen; Madeleine Kernen · KU ScholarWorks · 1989
Chapeau! is a first-year college text. Although it may appear, at first glance, to move very fast and introduce a large amount of material early, the vocabulary and grammatical structures that we expect students to control actively by the end of the year are limited in accord with our notion of a reasonable application of the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. As a result, while some instructors may be surprised at such things as the absence of the possessive pronoun, no insistence on the use of optional subjunctives, and no active treatment of the relative dont, others may be disturbed by what we still include in a first-year text. What we do expect students to acquire (which is quantitatively less than what we present in the text for them to know about), we believe they will acquire well, providing a sound basis for further study (formal or informal) and permitting us to say to them, both during and at the end of the course, "Chapeau!"
External
Au Boulot! First-Year French
David Dinneen; Hope Christiansen; Madeleine Kernen; Herve Pensec · KU ScholarWorks · 1995
Au boulot! is a two-year college French program consisting of: a textbook, workbook and 21 accompanying audio exercises; as well as a reference grammar, to be used the entire two years. We also insist that our students obtain a full-sized dictionary, and we recommend the HARPER-COLLINS-ROBERT bilingual New Standard Edition. (Instructors will note in reviewing the materials that we provide vocabulary lists at the ends of chapters, with translations, but no glossary. We have become convinced after years of experience that glossaries are counter-productive. It is vital that students learn to use dictionaries, and the sooner the better.)
External
Essentials of Linguistics, 2nd Edition
Catherine Anderson; Bronwyn Bjorkman; Derek Denis · eCampusOntario · 2022
This Second Edition of Essentials of Linguistics is considerably revised and expanded, including several new chapters, diverse language examples from signed and spoken languages, enhanced accessibility features, and an orientation towards equity and justice. While the primary audience is Canadian students of Introduction to Linguistics, it is also suitable for learners elsewhere, in online, hybrid, or in-person courses.
External
An Introduction to Philosophy
Russ Payne · BCcampus · 2023
The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, the goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. Traditional theories of right action is covered in a third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one's community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity. Over the course of the text, the author has tried to outline the continuity of thought that leads from the historical roots of philosophy to a few of the diverse areas of inquiry that continue to make significant contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
External
Intermediate Biblical Greek Reader: Galatians and Related Texts
Nijay Gupta; Jonah Sandford · George Fox University Library · 2018
After completing basic biblical Greek, students are often eager to continue to learn and strengthen their skills of translation and interpretation. This intermediate graded reader is designed to meet those needs. The reader is “intermediate” in the sense that it presumes the user will have already learned the basics of Greek grammar and syntax and has memorized Greek vocabulary words that appear frequently in the New Testament. The reader is “graded” in the sense that it moves from simpler translation work (Galatians) towards more advanced readings from the book of James, the Septuagint, and from one of the Church Fathers. In each reading lesson, the Greek text is given, followed by supplemental notes that offer help with vocabulary, challenging word forms, and syntax. Discussion questions are also included to foster group conversation and engagement. There are many good Greek readers in existence, but this reader differs from most others in a few important ways. Most readers offer text selections from different parts of the Bible, but in this reader the user works through one entire book (Galatians). All subsequent lessons, then, build off of this interaction with Galatians through short readings that are in some way related to Galatians. The Septuagint passages in the reader offer some broader context for texts that Paul quotes explicitly from the Septuagint. The Patristic reading from John Chrysystom comes from one of his homilies on Galatians. This approach to a Greek reader allows for both variety and coherence in the learning process. This reader is a collaborative project that developed out of an advanced Greek course at Portland Seminary (2017-2018). The following students contributed equally to the content of the textbook. Alexander Finkelson (MATS, Portland Seminary, 2018) Bryn Pliska Girard (MATS, Portland Seminary, 2018) Charles E. R. Jesch (MDIV, Portland Seminary, current student) Paul C. Moldovan (MDIV, Portland Seminary, current student) Jenny E. Sie
External
You, Writing! A Guide to College Composition
Kelli Hallsten-Erickson; Amy Swing · Minnesota State Colleges and Universities · 2025
This text is meant to be used in any first year College Composition class or as a general guide to college writing. The book focuses on writing as a process, not a product. The goal is to help students discover their own writing process, trying out different methods and strategies to find what works best for them.
External
Music Fundamentals 2: Rhythm and Meter
Terry Ewell; Catherine Schmidt-Jones · OpenStax CNX · 2013
This collection is the second of five dealing with the rudiments of music.
External
Music Fundamentals 1: Pitch and Major Scales and Keys
Terry Ewell; Catherine Schmidt-Jones · OpenStax CNX · 2013
This collection is the first of five dealing with the rudiments of music.
External
EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers
Shane Abrams · Portland State University Library · 2018
EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.
External
Keys to Understanding the Middle East
Alam Payind; Melinda McClimans · The Ohio State University Pressbooks · 2017
This book is intended for readers who have never studied the Middle East, or experts who may wish to fill gaps in their knowledge of the region from other disciplines. Whether for establishing or deepening one's knowledge of the region, these fundamentals are important to know. The languages, cultural, religious and sectarian communities of the region, and selected turning points and influential people in history are starting points for gaining an understanding of the diverse contexts of the region. It isbased on introductoryand graduatecourseson thecontemporaryMiddle East, which the Center's director, Dr. Alam Payind, has been teaching for the past 30 years. The book's co-author,Melinda McClimans,hastaught these and other courses with him, as well as her own,for the past 15years. The material isintendedengage with diverse – even conflicting – culturaland historicalperspectives,andways of perceivingboth Middle Easternandworld historyfrom perspectives within the region. It is not intended to reinforce a monolithic or matter-of-fact perception of the region.For this and many other reasons, images are an important aspect of the knowledge presented. Each chapter starts with links to its image galleries, along with other visual aids and key elements.
External
College ESL Writers: Applied Grammar and Composing Strategies for Success
Barbara Hall; Elizabeth Wallace · University System of Georgia · 2018
College ESL Writers: Applied Grammar and Composing Strategies for Success is designed as a comprehensive grammar and writing etext for high intermediate and advanced level non-native speakers of English. We open the text with a discussion on the sentence and then break it down into its elemental components, before reconstructing them into effective sentences with paragraphs and larger academic assignments. Following that, we provide instruction in paragraph and essay writing with several opportunities to both review the fundamentals as well as to demonstrate mastery and move on to more challenging assignments.We have structured the etext into three basic parts. Part I, Composing Strategies and Techniques, includes a sequenced discussion from composing effective sentences through paragraph and essay writing. This includes the prewriting and planning stages of writing as well as the revising and editing stage in the first five chapters. Part II, Language Use, Grammar, and Mechanics, is meant to be used as a grammar and mechanics handbook as well as the practice and review of idiomatic wording. Part III, All About Writing: Samples, Topics, and Rubrics, has chapters with additional writing topics for practice, sample student papers, and rubrics for evaluating writing.