Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Comunidades
Yuriko Ikeda; Julia Baumgardt · PALNI · 2024
This is a textbook for first-semester Spanish with a focus on the cultural products, practices and perspectives of Spanish-speaking communities in the world today. This text is designed to build students’ cultural and communicative proficiency at the novice level through interaction with authentic resources and real-life video conversations featuring native Spanish speakers living in the American Midwest. Each chapter includes interactive activities focused on each of the three modes of communication (interpretive, interpersonal and presentational), at least one Integrated Performance Assessment, exercises with automated feedback and prompts that promote cross-cultural comparisons through research and reflection.
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Teaching Apparel Production
Sheri Deaton · University of Arkansas · 2023
This text was written to provide students and teacher candidates with an introductory understanding of the skills associated with teaching apparel production. The book is broken into units and chapters that focus on essential skills for constructing garments and, more specifically, teaching others how to construct apparel and apparel-related products. Readers are invited to explore this text in any order, as it is not necessary to read each unit or chapter in sequence. Embedded within each chapter are key concepts related to the topic, pedagogical tips and tricks, a variety of resources, and references
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The Tragedy of the Self
Andrea Sangiacomo · University of Groningen Open Textbooks · 2023
Why do human beings interpret their overall experience in terms of selfhood? How was the notion and sense of self shaped at different times and in different cultures? What sort of problems or paradoxes did these constructions face? These lectures address these and related questions by sketching a roadmap of possible theoretical avenues for conceiving of the self, bringing to the foreground its soteriological implications, while also testing this theoretical outlook against insights offered by various disciplines. Exploring the cross-cultural spectrum of possible ways of conceiving of the self invites the more existential question of whether any of these possibilities might offer resources for dealing with the tragedies of today’s world, or maybe even saving it from some of them.
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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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Trayectos 2: Más sobre mí
Gabriela Zapata · Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) · 2022
Trayectos is an open curriculum for beginning second language (L2) learners of Spanish. The textbook offers the following features to L2 Spanish students and instructors: Learner-centered fresh, multimodal content, based on Learning by Design, a pedagogy inspired by the Multiliteracies movement (Kalantzis et al., 2005, 2016, 2019; Zapata, 2022). The four modules in Volume I connect the life worlds of learners with the life worlds of diverse Spanish speakers. Instruction incorporating the following features: Multimodal texts (e.g., readings, videos, posters) based on a variety of textual genres that contextualize topics about the lives of real university students; Communicative activities that bind language form to cultural meaning within real-life contexts, and offer students opportunities to discover how to use new Spanish vocabulary and grammar in diverse sociocultural situations; Critical thinking and language awareness tasks that showcase different varieties of Spanish, including those spoken in the United States, and help learners explore the Spanish-speaking world, including local Hispanic/Latinx communities; and Culminating tasks that oblige learners to synthesize their new linguistic and cultural knowledge into a personal, multimodal text. Supplementary digital resources that provide students with opportunities to practice the content learned through self-correcting activities (Práctica individual) and to use Spanish to broaden their knowledge of and critically analyze issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Spanish-speaking world (Voces de nuestro mundo; available at http://bit.ly/VocesMundo). An open copyright license (Creative Commons license) that gives all users the right to adapt the textbook and to share their new content with others, and digital how-to sections for instructors to answer their students’ unique needs.
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Trayectos 1: Mi vida en la universidad
Gabriela Zapata · Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) · 2021
Trayectos is an open curriculum for beginning second language (L2) learners of Spanish. The textbook offers the following features to L2 Spanish students and instructors: Learner-centered fresh, multimodal content, based on Learning by Design, a pedagogy inspired by the Multiliteracies movement (Kalantzis et al., 2005, 2016, 2019; Zapata, 2022). The four modules in Volume I connect the life worlds of learners with the life worlds of diverse Spanish speakers. Instruction incorporating the following features: Multimodal texts (e.g., readings, videos, posters) based on a variety of textual genres that contextualize topics about the lives of real university students; Communicative activities that bind language form to cultural meaning within real-life contexts, and offer students opportunities to discover how to use new Spanish vocabulary and grammar in diverse sociocultural situations; Critical thinking and language awareness tasks that showcase different varieties of Spanish, including those spoken in the United States, and help learners explore the Spanish-speaking world, including local Hispanic/Latinx communities; and Culminating tasks that oblige learners to synthesize their new linguistic and cultural knowledge into a personal, multimodal text. Supplementary digital resources that provide students with opportunities to practice the content learned through self-correcting activities (Práctica individual) and to use Spanish to broaden their knowledge of and critically analyze issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Spanish-speaking world (Voces de nuestro mundo; available at http://bit.ly/VocesMundo). An open copyright license (Creative Commons license) that gives all users the right to adapt the textbook and to share their new content with others, and digital how-to sections for instructors to answer their students’ unique needs.
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It’s About Them: Public Speaking in the 21st Century
Sara Kim; Douglas Marshall; June Pulliam · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
In addition to original material this book is an adaptation of Introduction to Speech Communication authored by Sarah E. Hollingsworth, Kathryn Weinland, Sasha Hanrahan, and Mary Walker with a CC BY-NC-SA license. Introduction to Speech Communication includes original work as well as adapted and remixed material from Exploring Public Speaking: 4th Edition licensed CC BY-NC-SA, Stand Up, Speak Out licensed CC BY-NC-SA, and Fundamentals of Public Speaking licensed CC BY. It’s About Them: Public Speaking in the 21st Century also adapted a chapter from Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy authored by Meggie Mapes that is licensed CC BY-NC-SA. The information on “What is an Open Textbook?” is adapted from Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology by Christina Hendricks with a CC-BY license. See the Adaptations section for specific changes. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college tr
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Writing Rhetorically: Framing First Year Writing
Kirk Fontenot; Shelley Rodrigue; Wanda Waller · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
This course equips students with a strong understanding of how to use rhetorical modes that underpin much academic writing. The textbook covers modes related to creative writing, such as narration and illustration, while also covering analytically-focused modes such as comparison and cause and effect. Detailed assignment sheets are supplemented by helpful student worksheets for each major paper assignment. The book's final chapter includes grammar and style exercises. This textbook has been heavily adapted from material taken from English Composition I: Rhetorical Methods-Based, an OER developed and authored by Lumen Learning. Each chapter’s author has edited and created new content using Lumen Learning’s text as its primary source material, except where otherwise indicated. Where applicable, other source materials have been noted at the chapter level. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and co
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Exploring the Arts: A Brief Introduction to Art, Theatre, Music, and Dance
Doris Hall; Kimberly Berkeley; Nubia Khan · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others. The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college transcripts for the same course.
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Music Appreciation: History, Culture, and Context
Bonnie Le; Francis Scully; Steven Edwards · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
Music makes us human. Every culture on earth has music. In fact, every human society extending back into prehistoric times has had music. Most of us are surrounded by music. We use it to enhance our mood and to regulate our metabolism, to keep us awake and help us go to sleep, as background to accompany the work, study, exercise, and relaxation that fills our days. But it is precisely when music steps out of this background and asks for our attention, engages our memory and our expectations, that it becomes a fundamentally artistic endeavor. Music is a sonic response to a question that’s not really about sound at all, but rather is historical and social. The study of music is the study of human thought, experience, and history. This course is about the musical imagination. It’s how to think about music, but it’s also about music as a mode of thinking. (inspired by Michael Hays, Professor of Architectural Theory at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design: Welcome to The Architectural Imagination (edx.org). This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is t
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Libro Libre: An Introduction to Spanish I
Erin Huebener; Handy Cuellar; Yelani Feldman · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
Welcome to Elementary Spanish! This textbook was designed in cooperation with the Louisiana Board of Regents Open Educational Textbook Pilot program. Designed by Elementary Instructors as a cooperative effort across Louisiana, this textbook will introduce you to the basic elements of the Spanish language through the use of self directed and active learning. This book is an adaptation of the open textbook “¡LIBRO LIBRE!: A free textbook for introductory Spanish” (which can be found at http://librolibre.net/) and was written by Erin Huebener. We have adapted Libro Libre: A Free Textbook for Introductory Spanish, originally released in 2018, to better fit a traditional 16-week semester schedule. “Libro Libre: A Free Textbook for Introductory Spanish” is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college transcripts for the same course.
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Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in the First Year Writing Class
Adam Falik; Dorie La Rue; Tracey Watts · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network · 2022
Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in the First Year Writing Class offers students necessary concepts and practice to learn all the elements needed for successful first year writing and set the stage for future writing success in college. This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others.The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college transcripts for the same course.
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Basic Khmer
Vathanak Sok · Michigan State University · 2022
This online interactive theme-based open textbook is for beginner learners of the Khmer language. This book aims to provide a practical introduction to speaking, listening, and reading. By the end of this course, students will be at the B1 level of the Common Framework for Language and at the low intermediate level on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency scales. Basic Khmer is funded by the Open Educational Resources Program at Michigan State University.
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An Introduction to Logic: From Everyday Life to Formal Systems
Albert Mosley; Eulalio Baltazar · Smith College Open Educational Resources: Textbooks · 2019
An introduction to the discipline of logic covering subjects from the structures of arguments, classical and modern logic, categorical and inductive inferences, to informal fallacies. Over 30 years of development provides a sound empirical based pedagogy throughout the text. Examples in ordinary language using familiar examples avoids the suggestion of an alien cultural imposition. A focus on the basic representational techniques of classical and modern logic. Students introduced to basic concepts of set theory, using Venn diagrams to represent statements and evaluate arguments. Students introduced to basic concepts of propositional logic and the use of truth-tables. Students introduced to basic concepts of predicate logic and the use of mixed quantifiers. Students introduced to the relationship between logic diagrams, circuit diagrams, and gate diagrams in computer science. Students introduced to the use of logic in ordinary and scientific contexts. Students provided a historical introduction to the development of modern probability theory and its relationship to logic. Students introduced to basic concepts of statistical inference, with non-technical treatments of hasty and biased statistical generalizations. And a unique treatment of stereotypical thinking in terms of statistical syllogisms. Students introduced to basic notions in analogical and causal inference. Exercises requiring both passive (recognition) and active (construction) skills. Exercises including locutions and examples from standard English and ethnic dialects of English (African-American, Hispanic-American, etc) Answers for sample exercises provided, making the text closer to a self-teaching module
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Fundamentals of Music Theory
Nikki Moran; Michael Edwards; Richard Worth; Zack Moir · University of Edinburgh · 2021
This open e-book is the result of a project funded by a University of Edinburgh Student Experience Grant, Open e-Textbooks for access to music education. The project was a collaboration between Open Educational Resources Service, and staff and student interns from the Reid School of Music. As a proof-of-concept endeavour, the project aimed to explore how effectively we could convert existing course content into convenient and reusable open formats suitable for use by staff and students both within and beyond the University. The resulting e-book presents open licensed educational materials that deal with the building blocks of musical stave (sometimes known as staff) notation, a language designed to communicate about musical ideas which is in use around the world. The resources in this e-book include video lectures and their transcripts, as well as supporting text explanations, examples and illustrations. The materials introduce topics such as the organisation of discrete pitches into scales and intervals, and temporal organisation of musical sounds as duration, in rhythm and metre. These rudiments are presented through an introduction to the elements of five-line stave notation, and through critical discussion of the advantages and limitations served by notational systems in the representation and analysis of musical sounds. This serves as the basis of further explanations, to illustrate musical concepts including key, time signature, harmonisation, cadence and modulation. We anticipate that subsequent versions of this e-book will update and develop the contents and presentation of the materials, following the success of this student-led collaboration.
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World Religions: the Spirit Searching
Jody Ondich · Jody Ondich · 2021
Humans across the globe and throughout millennia have searched for answers to questions like, "why are we here?" or "what am I supposed to do with my life?" And the answers people have found, or created, or chosen, have varied as widely as the cultures and people themselves. Some people focus on rules. Some focus on afterlives. Some look to become whole. Some seek adventure and learning. So this text, while full of various ways that people have searched and discovered and created, is only touching a few of the bigger traditions in our world. Hopefully each chapter will introduce the reader to some ideas from that specific tradition that enlighten them as to how a specific group of people think, believe, and live. This text is set up to be an ebook. The various videos, links and resources will only really work if the user keeps to the digital format. Read this book on a device--it will be a much more rewarding experience!
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Writing for Change: An Advanced ELL Resource
Inés Poblet · Whatcom Community College · 2021
This book has been a part of my pandemic journey with a goal of building English language learner resources, gathering up what I have learned about anti-racist, culturally responsive, and decolonization approaches. I know that I have not nearly met this goal in this single resource and that there is so much more to do. I am simply starting on the collective path and am so humbled to join fellow colleagues in the work of rewriting the myths and false narratives of our field. This goes well beyond one specific discipline. It is a call to all educators and all institutions to choose love in action, to choose change. This OER text includes the following: an introduction to creating a collectivist culture to support learning models and activities about multiple ways of organizing ideas in an essay. short readings and discussion highlighting the work of community organizers, activists, and social justice movements writing prompts that ask learners to synthesize, reflect on, and connect to the topics projects inviting learners to apply the content to their community environment additional resources offering multiple modalities for further learning including videos, articles, and podcasts a contrastive and multilingual approach to exploring grammar patterns to support writing
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A Christmas Carol
Timothy Krause · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2020
This version of the classic holiday story has been slightly abridged and lightly adapted for advanced students of English language. The text includes comprehension checks, discussion questions, and collaborative activities.
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Explorations 1: Grammar for the Experienced Beginner
Susan Caisee; Jennifer Rueda; Kristee Emens-Hesslink · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2021
Welcome to Explorations 1: Grammar for the Experienced Beginner. This English grammar textbook was designed for a class of Clackamas Community College (CCC) ESOL students who need only a review of the BE verb and are ready to learn the simple present and present progressive tenses. This textbook has four chapters. Each chapter covers a grammatical point/component/element. Chapter 1 is a review of the BE verb. The BE is special and has its own rules (different from other verbs). Chapter 2 is the Present Progressive tense. This is the tense we use when we are talking about things happening now or near now. Chapter 3 is the Simple Present Tense. We use the Simple Present Tense to talk about facts, routines, and habitual activities. Chapter 4 is a comparison of chapter 3 and 4.
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Technical Writing for Technicians
Will Fleming · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2020
Technical Writing for CTE is an open source e-textbook designed specifically for use in LBCC’s WD4 (Technical Writing for Welders) and all versions of IN4 (Technical Writing for CTE).