Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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A Cool Brisk Walk Through Discrete Mathematics
Stephen Davies · University of Mary Washington · 2023
A Cool Brisk Walk Through Discrete Mathematics - and its companion site "allthemath" - are completely-and-forever-free-and-open-source educational materials dedicated to the mathematics that budding computer science practitioners actually need to know. They feature the fun and addictive teaching of award-winning lecturer Dr. Stephen Davies of the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia!
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Supporting English Language Learners in First-Year College Composition
Breana Bayraktar; Elaine George; Nataliya Schetchikova · Virginia's Academic Library Consortium (VIVA) · 2023
Supporting ELLs in FYC is organized around five key essays, selected to coordinate with the essay styles commonly taught in first-year/first-semester composition courses. This organization is planned to offer instructors the flexibility to best support the pacing of the composition course. There are 2 expository, 1 narrative, and 2 argument essays. Each module includes one essay, with accompanying activities and supporting materials. Expository: Sweet, Sour & Resentful Expository: Why Rituals Are Good Narrative: Prison to Professor Argument: Fake News Argument: Misinformation
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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.
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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.
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Essential Mechanics - Statics and Strength of Materials with MATLAB and Octave
P. Venkataraman · RIT Scholar Works · 2020
Essential Mechanics - Statics and Strength of Materials with MATLAB and Octave combines two core engineering science courses - “Statics” and “Strength of Materials” - in mechanical, civil, and aerospace engineering. It weaves together various essential topics from Statics and Strength of Materials to allow discussing structural design from the very beginning. The traditional content of these courses are reordered to make it convenient to cover rigid body equilibrium and extend it to deformable body mechanics.The e-book covers the most useful topics from both courses with computational support through MATLAB/Octave. The traditional approach for engineering content is emphasized and is rigorously supported through graphics and analysis. Prior knowledge of MATLAB is not necessary. Instructions for its use in context is provided and explained. It takes advantage of the numerical, symbolic, and graphical capability of MATLAB for effective problem solving. This computational ability provides a natural procedure for What if? exploration that is important for design. The book also emphasizes graphics to understand, learn, and explore design. The idea for this book, the organization, and the flow of content is original and new. The integration of computation, and the marriage of analytical and computational skills is a new valuable experience provided by this e-book. Most importantly the book is very interactive with respect to the code as it appears along with the analysis.
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Building with Nature & Beyond: Principles for designing nature based engineering solutions
Jill Slinger · TU Delft Open · 2021
This book is based upon the edX MOOCs Engineering: Building with Nature and Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature. The Engineering: Building with Nature MOOC, explores the use of natural materials and ecological processes in achieving effective and sustainable hydraulic infrastructure designs, distilling Engineering and Ecological Design Principles. In the Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature course, the missing element of Social Design Principles is developed and taught. Join us in exploring the interface between hydraulic engineering, nature and society!
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Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials
René Alderliesten · TU Delft Open · 2018
This book provides an introduction to the discipline of aerospace structures and materials. It is the first book to date that includes all relevant aspects of this discipline within a single monologue. These aspects range from materials, manufacturing and processing techniques, to structures, design principles and structural performance, including aspects like durability and safety. With the purpose of introducing students into the basics of the entire discipline, the book presents the subjects broadly and loosely connected, adopting either a formal description or an informal walk around type of presentation. A key lessons conveyed within this book is the interplay between the exact science and engineering topics, like solid material physics and structural analysis, and the soft topics that are not easily captured by equations and formulas. Safety, manufacturability, availability and costing are some of these topics that are presented in this book to explain decisions and design solutions within this discipline.
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Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education
Anita Walz; Julee Farley · Virginia Tech Libraries · 2023
Higher education and PreK12 are vastly different domains. As such, well-intended, collaborative efforts between higher education and PreK12 do not always result in creation of useful and reusable learning materials for PreK12 classrooms or effective, productive partnerships. Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education is a toolkit of instructional resources designed to support higher education personnel who wish to improve or build strong and generative collaborations between higher education and PreK12 educators. The toolkit aims to expand use and re-usability of PreK12-centric learning resources through informed practices regarding copyright, open-licensing, and accessibility and includes a variety of resources: videos, presentations, transcripts, activities, guides, assignments, and assessment tools.
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Open ELA
Alexander Greengaard · Pima Community College · 2024
Open ELA is a complete course in Reading and Language Arts for instructors and self-directed learners in Adult Basic Education settings. These materials are designed to aid students in completing the GED exam and to support college and career pathways. This course includes resources for the Reading and Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science portions of the GED exam. It also includes GED Study Guides and lessons contextualized to college and career exploration and readiness. Open ELA covers six units of study: Understanding Literature, Intro to Communications, Metacognitive Reading, Film & Television Studies, Reading for Science & Social Studies, and Journalism.
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Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice
Kevin Adams; Murray Anderson; Elissah Becknell; CJ Ivory · Association of College and Research Libraries · 2022
As so often is the case, the idea for this book came from a twisting path. Not long after we began collaborating and presenting together at conferences, we were invited to draft a chapter on critical race theory (CRT) in academic libraries. An invited chapter is, of course, very flattering, so we proceeded without much thought to who the publisher would be. Angela had been working on social justice issues for a while at that point, while CJ had a wealth of expertise on open educational resources (OER). We merged our two areas of expertise in drafting that chapter, discussing OER as an opportunity to not only save students money but incorporate CRT into the curriculum—both in content and in practice. We submitted the final draft and were dismayed when we received the publication agreement. The publisher was unwilling to allow us to retain the copyright, even after we shared the licensing agreement that the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Press uses as an example. In discussing how to proceed—should we submit this chapter somewhere else?—we realized that we were really excited about extending the discussion of OER beyond just ensuring that all students can afford to access their course materials. So we pitched the idea of an edited volume on this topic to a publisher that we know has publishing practices we support (chapter authors retain copyright and select the Creative Commons license they prefer for their work), and here we are! Our entrance to academic work on social justice was through a focus on CRT. We outline this background here but wish to emphasize that it explicitly addresses only one aspect of social justice. For us, the structural understanding of racism in the United States creates a foundation upon which to understand other structures of oppression as well as intersectionality.
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Elementary Earth and Space Science Methods
Ted Neal · University of Iowa · 2019
We created this book to help you as both a college student and a future teacher. Dr. Ted Neal asked us to help him create this resource from the perspective of students who have taken Science Methods II–what would we want in a textbook for this course? With this in mind, we have gathered and created resources to help you better understand science and feel confident in your abilities as a future teacher. This book is divided into five parts which align with the Science Methods II course: Physics Space Science Earth Science Climate Science Course Materials and Pedagogy Within each part, the material is broken down into smaller chapters. Here you will find written explanations, video links, glossary terms, key takeaways, and practice quizzes to help you understand the material. This book is designed to be a flexible resource; use it as much or as little as you need throughout the course.
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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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Game Based and Adaptive Learning Strategies
Carrie Miller; Odbayar Batsaikhan; Elizabeth Pluskwik · Minnesota State Colleges and Universities · 2022
This book is designed to accompany a graduate-level instructional design course: Game-Based and Adaptive Learning, but could also be used for undergraduate teacher education or instructional design courses. The original texts and material for this book came from the development of a course for Brandeis University as part of their MS in Learner Experience Design program. This material can be used to teach pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and instructional designers about game-based and adaptive learning. Assessments used in the actual Game-based and Adaptive Learning course are included in the final chapter and serve as recommendations for assessments of the learning outcomes. The material in this book pairs well with Using Game-Based Learning Online – A Cookbook of Recipes by The EGG. The Faculty Showcase materials were developed by dedicated faculty during the course of a year-long game development workshop in which faculty were introduced to GBL, developed game prototypes, played a variety of games, and finally playtested their designs. The work they continue to do in the area of GBL is part of the inspiration for this book. If you would like to contribute your own case study, please contact me at carrie.miller@mnsu.edu for consideration. Carrie Lewis Miller, Ph.D.- editor/author- Instructional Designer, Minnesota State University, Mankato
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Computer Networks: A Systems Approach
Larry Peterson; Bruce Davie · Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie · 2019
Suppose you want to build a computer network, one that has the potential to grow to global proportions and to support applications as diverse as teleconferencing, video on demand, electronic commerce, distributed computing, and digital libraries. What available technologies would serve as the underlying building blocks, and what kind of software architecture would you design to integrate these building blocks into an effective communication service? Answering this question is the overriding goal of this book—to describe the available building materials and then to show how they can be used to construct a network from the ground up.
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Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems
Hiroki Sayama · Open SUNY · 2015
Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems introduces students to mathematical/computational modeling and analysis developed in the emerging interdisciplinary field of Complex Systems Science. Complex systems are systems made of a large number of microscopic components interacting with each other in nontrivial ways. Many real-world systems can be understood as complex systems, where critically important information resides in the relationships between the parts and not necessarily within the parts themselves. This textbook offers an accessible yet technically-oriented introduction to the modeling and analysis of complex systems. The topics covered include: fundamentals of modeling, basics of dynamical systems, discrete-time models, continuous-time models, bifurcations, chaos, cellular automata, continuous field models, static networks, dynamic networks, and agent-based models. Most of these topics are discussed in two chapters, one focusing on computational modeling and the other on mathematical analysis. This unique approach provides a comprehensive view of related concepts and techniques, and allows readers and instructors to flexibly choose relevant materials based on their objectives and needs. Python sample codes are provided for each modeling example.
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Programming Fundamentals - A Modular Structured Approach using C++
Kenneth Busbee · OpenStax CNX · 2013
Programming Fundamentals - A Modular Structured Approach using C++ is written by Kenneth Leroy Busbee, a faculty member at Houston Community College in Houston, Texas. The materials used in this textbook/collection were developed by the author and others as independent modules for publication within the Connexions environment. Programming fundamentals are often divided into three college courses: Modular/Structured, Object Oriented and Data Structures. This textbook/collection covers the first of those three courses. The learning modules of this textbook/collection were written as standalone modules. Students using a collection of modules as a textbook will usually view it contents by reading the modules sequentially as presented by the author of the collection. The learning modules of this textbook/collection were, for the most part, written without consideration of a speci??c programming language. In many cases the C++ language is discussed as part of the explanation of the concept. Often the examples used for C++ are exactly the same for the Java programming language. However, some modules were written speci??cally for the C++ programming language. This could not beavoided as the C++ language is used in conjunction with this textbook/collection by the author in teaching college courses.
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Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel; Jethro Lieberman · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business is an up-to-date textbook that covers legal issues that students must understand in today's highly regulated business environment. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, consumer credit transactions, bankruptcy, intellectual property, securities regulation, regulation of real estate, antitrust, unfair trade practices, employment law and labor relations. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy they will need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, employees, creditors, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.