Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Self-directed multimodal learning in higher education
Jako Olivier · AOSIS Publishing · 2020
This book aims to provide an overview of theoretical and practical considerations in terms of self-directed multimodal learning within the university context. Multimodal learning is approached in terms of the levels of multimodality and specifically blended learning and the mixing of modes of delivery (contact and distance education). As such, this publication will provide a unique snapshot of multimodal practices within higher education through a self-directed learning epistemological lens. The book covers issues such as what self-directed multimodal learning entails, mapping of specific publications regarding blended learning, blended learning in mathematics, geography, natural science and computer literacy, comparative experiences in distance education as well as situated and culturally appropriate learning in multimodal contexts. This book provides a unique focus on multimodality in terms of learning and delivery within the context of self-directed learning. Therefore, the publication would not only advance the scholarship of blended and open distance learning in South Africa, but also the contribute to enriching the discourse regarding self-direction. From this book readers will get an impression of the latest trends in literature in terms of multimodal self-directed learning in South Africa as well as unique empirical work being done in this regard.
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Graduate Research Methods in Social Work
Matt DeCarlo; Cory Cummings; Kate Agnelli · Open Social Work Education · 2021
We designed our book to help graduate social work students through every step of the research process, from conceptualization to dissemination. Our textbook centers cultural humility, information literacy, pragmatism, and an equal emphasis on quantitative and qualitative methods. It includes extensive content on literature reviews, cultural bias and respectfulness, and qualitative methods, in contrast to traditionally used commercial textbooks in social work research. Our author team spans across academic, public, and nonprofit social work research. We love research, and we endeavored through our book to make research more engaging, less painful, and easier to understand. Our textbook exercises direct students to apply content as they are reading the book to an original research project. By breaking it down step-by-step, writing in approachable language, as well as using stories from our life, practice, and research experience, our textbook helps professors overcome students’ research methods anxiety and antipathy. If you decide to adopt our resource, we ask that you complete this short Adopter’s Survey that helps us keep track of our community impact. You can also contact profmattdecarlo@gmail.com for a student workbook, homework assignments, slideshows, a draft bank of quiz questions, and a course calendar.
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The Story of Dinosaurs
Ashley Burkett, PhD · Oklahoma State University · 2023
This resource will explore the validity of arguments and/or conclusions in dinosaur research through evaluating the scientific evidence. Students using this resource will read, experiment, and evaluate scientific literature surrounding dinosaurs. Students will have the opportunity to work with others to evaluate the plausibility of the dinosaur concepts and theories, and engage in hands-on experiments to add additional information to their interpretations. Students will learn to participate in evaluation mechanisms to assess critical thinking and science literacy.
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An Interactive Introduction to Organismal and Molecular Biology
Andrea Bierema · Michigan State University · 2021
This "textbook" is interactive, meaning that although each chapter has text, they also have interactive HTML5 content, such as quizzes, simulations, interactive videos, and images with clickable hotspots. Students receive instant feedback when they complete the interactive content, and therefore, can learn and check their understanding all in one place. The first unit introduces students to the nature of science, including scientific controversies, and information literacy, including how to analyze literature and identify stakeholders. Unit 2 is organismal biology, including carbon cycling and population growth, and unit 3 is molecular biology with a focus on gene expression.
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Writing Our Bodies
Sunayani Bhattacharya; Meghan Sweeney; Yin Yuan; Gina Kessler Lee · Saint Mary's College of California · 2025
Writing Our Bodies offers students a holistic approach to writing that intertwines embodied rhetorics with critical inquiry and academic conventions. Beginning with an introduction to rhetorical embodiment and personal experience, the text guides learners through writing to analyze, take a stand, revise, synthesize sources, and make arguments with research, while attending to how identity, technology, linguistic diversity, and power influence both reading and writing. Emphasizing reflection, audience awareness, disciplinary literacy, and ethical source use, this resource prepares students to write purposefully across contexts and audiences.
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Introduction to College Research
Walter Butler; Aloha Sargent; Kelsey Smith · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2021
This book acknowledges our changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy to support a research process with intention. We start by critically examining the online environment many of us already engage with every day, looking at algorithms, the attention economy, information disorder and cynicism, information hygiene, and fact-checking. We then move into an exploration of information source types, meaningful research topics, keyword choices, effective search strategies, library resources, Web search considerations, the ethical use of information, and citation.
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Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers
Christopher Iverson; Dan Ehrenfeld · Milne Open Textbooks · 2023
Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers is an edited collection featuring writing from students, faculty, and staff at Farmingdale State College, a State University of New York (SUNY) campus on Long Island. Each contributor reflects on their own writing as well as writing in their fields/disciplines. Namely, they reflect on their writing processes, hence the name of the book. The FSC Writing in the Disciplines committee curated excerpts of published or unpublished work from faculty, students, and administrators across departments and offices. The result is Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers, a collection of writing samples and reflections on the processes that made those pieces of writing possible. This book shows that, while writing looks and functions differently in different disciplines, college communities center on writing. From the college president to the faculty to the students, each member of the community grapples with writing, even in disciplines not considered to be writing-intensive. The text features compositions from nursing, STEM and health sciences, education, and history and culture. The examples span from reflections on the role of writing in one’s academic career, examples of professional writing in the sciences, research papers, conference proposals, to laboratory reports. The examples of published or works-in-progress are accompanied by thoughtful reflections on how the author crafted their work. The collection presents an opportunity for scholars to acknowledge the centrality of writing in their everyday work. Students learning how to write in college and about writing conventions in their specific disciplines will gain an overview of writing they will encounter in their academic career and an appreciation for the multitudes of ways writers work. Perfect for introductory writing courses, and useful modularly for any class that touches on writing or information literacy, this text is a unique, honest, and practical resource for any u
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BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English
Shantel Ivits · BCcampus · 2015
This course pack is designed to meet the learning outcomes for Adult Literacy Fundamental English Level 5 (roughly equivalent to grades 6 to 7.5 in the K-12 system). Every chapter includes a level-appropriate, high-interest reading of between 500 and 800 words. The readings are freely available in a separate reader with convenient links to the readings in each chapter of this course pack. Font size and line spacing can be adjusted in the online view, and have been enhanced for the print and PDF versions for easier reading. This course pack has been reviewed by subject experts from colleges and universities.
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BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English
Shantel Ivits · BCcampus · 2015
This course pack is designed to meet the learning outcomes for Adult Literacy Fundamental English Level 6 (roughly equivalent to grades 7.5 to 9 in the K-12 system). Every chapter includes a level-appropriate, high-interest reading of between 500 and 1,000 words. The readings are freely available in a separate reader with convenient links to the readings in each chapter of this course pack. Font size and line spacing can be adjusted in the online view, and have been enhanced for the print and PDF versions for easier reading. This course pack has been reviewed by subject experts from colleges and universities.
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Technical Writing
Annemarie Hamlin; Chris Rubio · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2016
This open textbook offers students of technical writing an introduction to the processes and products involved in professional, workplace, and technical writing. The text is broken up into sections reflecting key components of researching, developing, and producing a technical report. Readers will also learn about other professional communication, designing documents, and creating and integrating graphics. Written especially for an academic setting, this book provides readers with guidance on information literacy and documenting sources. This book was collected, adapted, and edited from multiple openly licensed sources.
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Placing the History of College Writing: Stories from the Incomplete Archive
Nathan Shepley · WAC Clearinghouse · 2015
In Placing the History of College Writing, Nathan Shepley argues that pre-1950s composition history, if analyzed with the right conceptual tools, can pluralize and clarify our understanding of the relationship between the writing of college students and the writing's physical, social, and discursive surroundings. Even if the immediate outcome of student writing is to generate academic credit, Shepley shows, the writing does more complex rhetorical work. It gives students chances to uphold or adjust institutional codes for student behavior, allows students and their literacy sponsors to respond to sociopolitical issues in a city or state, enables faculty and administrators to create strategic representations of institutional or program identities, and connects people across disciplines, occupations, and geographic locations. Shepley argues that even if many of today's composition scholars and instructors work at institutions that lack extensive historical records of the kind usually preferred by composition historians, those scholars and teachers can mine their institutional collections for signs of the various contexts with which student writing dealt.
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Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Vol. II
Charlie Lowe; Pavel Zemliansky · Parlor Press · 2011
Volumes in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing offer multiple perspectives on a wide-range of topics about writing. In each chapter, authors present their unique views, insights, and strategies for writing by addressing the undergraduate reader directly. Drawing on their own experiences, these teachers-as-writers invite students to join in the larger conversation about the craft of writing. Consequently, each essay functions as a standalone text that can easily complement other selected readings in writing or writing-intensive courses across the disciplines at any level. Volume 2 continues the tradition of the previous volume with topics, such as the rhetorical situation, collaboration, documentation styles, weblogs, invention, writing assignment interpretation, reading critically, information literacy, ethnography, interviewing, argument, document design, and source integration.
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Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy
Mary Ann Cullen; Elizabeth Dill · Association of College and Research Libraries · 2022
"The present volume is timely not only because it models creative and effective strategies to advance both open education and information literacy, but especially because it poses critical questions and urges practitioners to go well beyond questions of access to and the use of information. It demands reflection on what is being accessed (and what is not), who is gaining access (and who is not), who is providing access (and who is not), and what the goal is of this access (and what lies beyond access)."—from the Foreword by Rajiv S. Jhangiani Information literacy skills are key when finding, using, adapting, and producing open educational resources (OER). Educators who wish to include OER for their students need to be able to find these resources and use them according to their permissions. When open pedagogical methods are employed, students need to be able to use information literacy skills as they compile, reuse, and create open resources. Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy captures current open education and information literacy theory and practice and provides inspiration for the future. Chapters include practical applications, theoretical musings, literature reviews, and case studies and discuss social justice issues, collaboration, open pedagogy, training, and advocacy. The book is divided into six parts: Foundations Teaching Info Lit with OER Librarian Support of Open Pedagogy/OER Social Justice/Untold Stories Student Advocacy Spreading the Love: Training Future Advocates and Practitioners Chapters cover topics including library-led OER creation; digital cultural heritage and the intersections of primary source literacy and information literacy; situated learning and open pedagogy; critical librarianship and open education; and developing student OER leaders. Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy—which went through an open peer review process—informs and inspires on OER, info lit, and their man
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Informed Arguments: A Guide to Writing and Research
Terri Pantuso; Sarah LeMire; Kathy Anders · Texas A&M University · 2023
Informed Arguments: A Guide to Writing and Research(4th Edition) is a premier Open Educational Resource (OER) designed to bridge the gap between critical thinking and rhetorical mastery. This edition refines the art of academic inquiry, offering students a transparent and accessible framework for deconstructing complex claims and constructing evidence-based positions. By prioritizing digital literacy and diverse perspectives, it empowers learners to navigate today’s information-saturated landscape with analytical precision. Comprehensive yet concise, this textbook remains an essential, cost-free solution for fostering scholarly voice and civic engagement in the modern composition classroom.
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Bad Ideas About Writing
Cheryl Ball; Drew Loewe · West Virginia University · 2017
We intend this work to be less a bestiary of bad ideas about writing than an effort to name bad ideas and suggest better ones. Some of those bad ideas are quite old, such as the archetype of the inspired genius author, the five-paragraph essay, or the abuse of adjunct writing teachers. Others are much newer, such as computerized essay scoring or gamification. Some ideas, such as the supposed demise of literacy brought on by texting, are newer bad ideas but are really instances of older bad ideas about literacy always being in a cycle of decline. Yet the same core questions such as what is good writing, what makes a good writer, how should writing be assessed, and the like persist across contexts, technologies, and eras. The project has its genesis in frustration, but what emerges is hope: hope for leaving aside bad ideas and thinking about writing in more productive, inclusive, and useful ways.
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Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future
Asao Inoue · WAC Clearinghouse · 2015
In Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies, Asao B. Inoue theorizes classroom writing assessment as a complex system that is "more than" its interconnected elements. To explain how and why antiracist work in the writing classroom is vital to literacy learning, Inoue incorporates ideas about the white racial habitus that informs dominant discourses in the academy and other contexts. Inoue helps teachers understand the unintended racism that often occurs when teachers do not have explicit antiracist agendas in their assessments. Drawing on his own teaching and classroom inquiry, Inoue offers a heuristic for developing and critiquing writing assessment ecologies that explores seven elements of any writing assessment ecology: power, parts, purposes, people, processes, products, and places.
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Steps to Success: Crossing the Bridge Between Literacy Research and Practice
Kristen Munger · Open SUNY · 2016
Steps to Success: Crossing the Bridge Between Literacy Research and Practice introduces instructional strategies linked to the most current research-supported practices in the field of literacy. The book includes chapters related to scientifically-based literacy research, early literacy development, literacy assessment, digital age influences on children's literature, literacy development in underserved student groups, secondary literacy instructional strategies, literacy and modern language, and critical discourse analysis. Chapters are written by authors with expertise in both college teaching and the delivery of research-supported literacy practices in schools. The book features detailed explanations of a wide variety of literacy strategies that can be implemented by both beginning and expert practitioners. Readers will gain knowledge about topics frequently covered in college literacy courses, along with guided practice for applying this knowledge in their future or current classrooms. The book's success-oriented framework helps guide educators toward improving their own practices and is designed to foster the literacy development of students of all ages.