Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Working With Academic Literacies: Case Studies Towards Transformative Practice
Theresa Lillis; Kathy Harrington; Mary Lea; Sally Mitchell · WAC Clearinghouse · 2015
The editors and contributors to this collection explore what it means to adopt an "academic literacies" approach in policy and pedagogy. Transformative practice is illustrated through case studies and critical commentaries from teacher-researchers working in a range of higher education contexts—from undergraduate to postgraduate levels, across disciplines, and spanning geopolitical regions including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cataluña, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Key questions addressed include: How can a wider range of semiotic resources and technologies fruitfully serve academic meaning and knowledge making? What kinds of writing spaces do we need and how can these be facilitated? How can theory and practice from "Academic Literacies" be used to open up debate about writing pedagogy at institutional and policy levels?
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WAC and Second-Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices
Terry Zawacki; Michelle Cox · WAC Clearinghouse · 2014
In WAC and Second-Language Writers, the editors and contributors pursue the ambitious goal of including within WAC theory, research, and practice the differing perspectives, educational experiences, and voices of second-language writers. The chapters within this collection not only report new research but also share a wealth of pedagogical, curricular, and programmatic practices relevant to second-language writers. Representing a range of institutional perspectives—including those of students and faculty at public universities, community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and English-language schools—and a diverse set of geographical and cultural contexts, the editors and contributors report on work taking place in the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction
Beth Hewett; Kevin DePew; Elif Guler; Robbin Zeff Warner · WAC Clearinghouse · 2015
Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction, edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew, with associate editors Elif Guler and Robbin Zeff Warner, addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders), the contributors to this collection explain the foundations of the recently published (2013) A Position Statement of Principles and Examples Effective Practices for OWI and provide illustrative practical applications. To that end, in every chapter, the authors address issues of inclusive and accessible writing instruction (based upon physical and mental disability, linguistic ability, and socioeconomic challenges) in technology enhanced settings. The five parts of this book attempt to cover the most important issues relevant to principle-centered OWI: (1) An OWI Primer, (2) OWI Pedagogy and Administrative Decisions, (3) Practicing Inclusivity in OWI, (4) Faculty and Student Preparation for OWI, and (5) New Directions in OWI. Working from the belief that most writing courses eventually will be mediated online to various degrees, the editors offer principles and practices that will allow this collection to inform future composition theory and praxis. To this end, the editors hope that the guidance provided in this collection will encourage readers to join a conversation about designing OWI practices, contributing to the scholarship about OWI, and reshaping OWI theory.
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ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios
Katherine Wills; Rich Rice · WAC Clearinghouse · 2013
ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios addresses theories and practices advanced by some of the most innovative and active proponents of ePortfolios. Editors Katherine V. Wills and Rich Rice interweave twelve essays that address the ways in which ePortfolios can facilitate sustainable and measureable writing-related student development, assessment and accountability, learning and knowledge transfer, and principles related to universal design for learning, just-in-time support, interaction design, and usability testing.
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Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places
Chris Thaiss; Gerd Bräuer; Paula Carlino; Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams · WAC Clearinghouse · 2012
Emerging from the International WAC/WID Mapping Project, this collection of essays is meant to inform decision-making by teachers, program managers, and college/university administrators considering how writing can most appropriately be defined, managed, funded, and taught in the places where they work. Writing Programs Worldwide offers an important global perspective to the growing research literature in the shaping of writing programs. The authors of its program profiles show how innovators at a diverse range of universities on six continents have dealt creatively over many years with day-to-day and long-range issues affecting how students across disciplines and languages grow as communicators and learners. In these profiles, we see teachers and researchers relying on colleagues and on transnational scholarship to build initiatives that are both well suited to their specific environments and can serve as regional and often global models. Their struggles and achievements offer insights to colleagues in similar locales and across borders who seek to establish, enhance, and assess their own work as designers of writing programs. An introduction and three section essays by the editors illuminate themes that inform this collection. Growing networks of initiators and scholars and survey results from the International WAC/WID Mapping Project exemplify the argument of this collection for transnational exchange and collaboration.
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Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing
David Franke; Alex Reid; Anthony Di Renzo · WAC Clearinghouse · 2010
Design Discourse: Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, edited byDavid Franke, Alex Reid, andAnthony Di Renzo,addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures — what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing" — often by addressing explicitly the tensions between them. Design Discourse offers insights into the high-stakes decisions made by program designers as they seek to "function at the intersection of the practical and the abstract, the human and the technical."
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Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom
Martine Rife; Shaun Slattery; Dànielle DeVoss · WAC Clearinghouse · 2011
The editors of Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom bring together stories, theories, and research that can further inform the ways in which we situate and address intellectual property issues in our writing classrooms. The essays in the collection identify and describe a wide range of pedagogical strategies, consider theories, present research, explore approaches, and offer both cautionary tales and local and contextual successes that can further inform the ways in which we situate and address intellectual property issues in our teaching.
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Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom
Tara Roeder; Roseanne Gatto · WAC Clearinghouse · 2014
Critical Expressivism is an ambitious attempt to re-appropriate intellectual territory that has more often been charted by its detractors than by its proponents. Indeed, as Peter Elbow observes in his contribution to this volume, "As far as I can tell, the term 'expressivist' was coined and used only by people who wanted a word for people they disapproved of and wanted to discredit." The editors and contributors to this collection invite readers to join them in a new conversation, one informed by "a belief that the term expressivism continues to have a vitally important function in our field."
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Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers
Andy Kirkpatrick; Zhichang Xu · WAC Clearinghouse · 2012
The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world." The result is a book that provides teachers of writing, and in particular those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric, a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. Understanding this important rhetorical tradition provides a strong foundation for assessing and responding to the writing of this growing group of students.
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The Centrality of Style
Mike Duncan; Star M. Vanguri · WAC Clearinghouse · 2013
InThe Centrality of Style, editors Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri argue that style is a central concern of composition studies even as they demonstrate that some of the most compelling work in the area has emerged from the margins of the field. Calling attention to this paradox in his foreword to the collection, Paul Butler observes, "Many of the chapters work within the liminal space in which style serves as both a centralizing and decentralizing force in rhetoric and composition. Clearly, the authors and editors have made an invaluable contribution in their collection by exposing the paradoxical nature of a canon that continues to play a vital role in our disciplinary history."
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Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies
Steven Corbett · WAC Clearinghouse · 2015
How closely can or should writing centers and writing classrooms collaborate? Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities. Rather than practice separately in the center or in the classroom, rather than seeing teacher here and tutor there and student over there, CBT asks all participants in the dynamic drama of teaching and learning to consider the many possible means of connecting synergistically. This book offers the "more-is-more" value of designing more peer-to-peer learning situations for developmental and multicultural writers, and a more elaborate view of what happens in these peer-centered learning environments. It offers important implications—especially of directive and nondirective tutoring strategies and methods—for peer-to-peer learning and one-to-one tutoring and conferencing for all teachers and learners of writing.
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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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The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning
Linda Buturian · University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2016
The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.
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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.
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Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom
Melissa Tombro · Open SUNY · 2016
Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom is dedicated to the practice of immersive ethnographic and autoethnographic writing that encourages authors to participate in the communities about which they write. This book draws not only on critical qualitative inquiry methods such as interview and observation, but also on theories and sensibilities from creative writing and performance studies, which encourage self-reflection and narrative composition. Concepts from qualitative inquiry studies, which examine everyday life, are combined with approaches to the creation of character and scene to help writers develop engaging narratives that examine chosen subcultures and the author's position in relation to her research subjects. The book brings together a brief history of first-person qualitative research and writing from the past forty years, examining the evolution of nonfiction and qualitative approaches in relation to the personal essay. A selection of recent student writing in the genre as well as reflective student essays on the experience of conducting research in the classroom is presented in the context of exercises for coursework and beyond. Also explored in detail are guidelines for interviewing and identifying subjects and techniques for creating informed sketches and images that engage the reader. This book provides approaches anyone can use to explore their communities and write about them first-hand. The methods presented can be used for a single assignment in a larger course or to guide an entire semester through many levels and varieties of informed personal writing.
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Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis
Randall Fallows · Saylor Foundation · 2011
The reason why Randall Fallows wrote Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis is simple: to help give students a better understanding of how to discover, develop, and revise an analytical essay. Here is how his 5 chapter book goes about doing just that: The first two chapters focus on the nature of an analysis and what's involved in writing an analytical essay. Randall shows that analysis consists of a balance of assertions (statements which present their viewpoints or launch an exploration of their concerns), examples (specific passages/scenes/events which inspire these views), explanations (statements that reveal how the examples support the assertions), and significance (statements which reveal the importance of their study to personal and/or cultural issues). After showing why each feature should be present throughout an essay, he reveals how to "set the stage" for producing one of their own. He first helps students to evaluate their own views on a subject and to examine how these views emerge from their own experiences, values and judgments. He, then, shows them how to research what others have said about the subject and provides suggestions for evaluating and incorporating this research into their own perspectives. Finally, Randall discusses the nature of writing, not as a linear procedure, but as a recursive process where the discovery and clarification of a concept occur simultaneously. The remaining three chapters reveal more specific advice on how to develop an analytical essay. Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis by Randall Fallows is a great text to prepare any student to write analytical essays for the argument and persuasion courses.
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Artificial Intelligence and Librarianship
Martin Frické · SoftOption · 2024
Courses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Librarianship in ALA-accredited Masters of Library and Information (MLIS) degrees are rare. We have all been surprised by ChatGPT and similar Large Language Models. Generative AI is an important new area for librarianship. It is also developing so rapidly that no one can really keep up. Those trying to produce AI courses for the MLIS degree need all the help they can get. This book is a gesture of support. It consists of about 100,000 words on the topic, with a 4-500 item bibliography. The third edition has changes and additions. These include: a new Chapter 6 on evaluation and the future new materials in Chapter 5 on current large language and multimodal models scattered revisions, corrections, and updates.
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A First Course in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Louis Scharf · OpenStax CNX · 2009
This book was written for an experimental freshman course at the University of Colorado. The course is now an elective that the majority of our electrical and computer engineering students take in the second semester of their freshman year, just before their first circuits course. Our department decided to offer this course for several reasons: we wanted to pique student' interest in engineering by acquainting them with engineering teachers early in their university careers and by providing with exposure to the types of problems that electrical and computer engineers are asked to solve; we wanted students entering the electrical and computer engineering programs to be prepared in complex analysis, phasors, and linear algebra, topics that are of fundamental importance in our discipline; we wanted students to have an introduction to a software application tool, such as MATLAB, to complete their preparation for practical and efficient computing in their subsequent courses and in their professional careers; we wanted students to make early contact with advanced topics like vector graphics, filtering, and binary coding so that they would gain a more rounded picture of modern electrical and computer engineering. In order to introduce this course, we had to sacrifice a second semester of Pascal programming. We concluded that the sacrifice was worth making because we found that most of our students were prepared for high-level language computing after just one semester of programming. We believe engineering educators elsewhere are reaching similar conclusions about their own students and curriculums. We hope this book helps create a much needed dialogue about curriculum revision and that it leads to the development of similar introductory courses that encourage students to enter and practice our craft.Students electing to take this course have completed one semester of calculus, computer programming, chemistry, and humanities. Concurrently with this course, students take ph
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Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals
Wayne Collins; Alex Haas; Ken Jeffery; Alan Martin · BCcampus · 2015
This textbook -- written by a group of select experts with a focus on different aspects of the design process, from creation to production -- addresses the many steps of creating and then producing physical, printed, or other imaged products that people interact with on a daily basis. It covers the concept that, while most modern graphic design is created on computers using design software, the ideas and concepts don't stay on the computer. The ideas need to be completed in the computer software, then progress to an imaging (traditionally referred to as printing) process. Keywords are highlighted throughout and summarized in a Glossary at the end of the book, and each chapter includes exercises and suggested readings.
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Business Writing For Everyone
Arley Cruthers · Kwantlen Polytechnic University · 2021
Business Writing For Everyone is an inclusive guide to writing in the workplace. The book takes a process-oriented, storytelling approach to composition: focusing less on genre and more on the decisions that effective business communicators make. Business Writing For Everyone also contains interactive H5P activities for students to test their learning, and activities for further reflection that instructors can use in the classroom or assign as homework.