Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Wellbeing in Educational Contexts
Susan Carter; Cecily Andersen · University of Southern Queensland · 2019
This text endeavours to focus on wellbeing promotion in educational contexts as schools and other educational contexts play a pivotal role in teaching students about nonviolence, promoting understanding of diversity, endowing people with a shared purpose and meaning and the skills and behaviours to create a more inclusive, healthy, and positive future.
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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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Introduction to Curriculum for Early Childhood Education
Jennifer Paris; Kristin Beeve; Clint Springer · College of the Canyons · 2018
Welcome to learning about how to effectively plan curriculum for young children. This textbook will address: Developing curriculum through the planning cycle Theories that inform what we know about how children learn and the best ways for teachers to support learning The three components of developmentally appropriate practice Importance and value of play and intentional teaching Different models of curriculum Process of lesson planning (documenting planned experiences for children) Physical, temporal, and social environments that set the stage for children’s learning Appropriate guidance techniques to support children’s behaviors as the self-regulation abilities mature. Planning for preschool-aged children in specific domains including Physical development Language and literacy Math Science Creative (the visual and performing arts) Diversity (social science and history) Health and safety How curriculum planning for infants and toddlers is different from planning for older children Supporting school-aged children’s learning and development in out-of-school time through curriculum planning Making children’s learning visible through documentation and assessment
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Information Literacy: Research and Collaboration across Disciplines
Barbara D'Angelo; Sandra Jamieson; Barry Maid · WAC Clearinghouse · 2016
This collection brings together scholarship and pedagogy from multiple perspectives and disciplines, offering nuanced and complex perspectives on Information Literacy in the second decade of the 21st century. Taking as a starting point the concerns that prompted the Association of Research Libraries (ACRL) to review the Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education and develop the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015), the chapters in this collection consider six frameworks that place students in the role of both consumer and producer of information within today's collaborative information environments. Contributors respond directly or indirectly to the work of the ACRL, providing a bridge between past/current knowledge and the future and advancing the notion that faculty, librarians, administrators, and external stakeholders share responsibility and accountability for the teaching, learning, and research of Information Literacy.
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Reading With My Eyes Open: Embracing the critical and the personal in language pedagogy
Gerdi Quist · Ubiquity Press · 2013
Untangling the various approaches to language teaching and their history, Gerdi Quist maps recent thinking in language studies at university. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, drawn from educational philosophy, cultural studies, intercultural studies and language pedagogy, the author discusses the many tensions and currents in contemporary language teaching. The author puts forward an alternative pedagogy, that of a cultuurtekst-perspective, which engages learners at complex linguistic and cultural levels. In discussing the case study in which this approach is tested, the author develops her argument for embracing various critical perspectives through the personal engagement of students. From the start the author acknowledges her own engaged position as a language teacher in a liberal humanistic educational environment. She adopts a self-critical perspective through which her engagement with adverse student reaction leads to deepening insights both for the author and her students as part of the non-linear process of learning. Gerdi Quist teaches Dutch language and lectures on multiculturalism and intercultural communication. Recent publications included a book chapter and journal articles on language pedagogy and intercultural communication.
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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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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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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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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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Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning
A.W. (Tony) Bates · BCcampus · 2015
Teachers, instructors and faculty are facing unprecedented change, with often larger classes, more diverse students, demands from government and employers who want more accountability and the development of graduates who are workforce ready, and above all, we are all having to cope with ever changing technology. To handle change of this nature, teachers and instructors need a base of theory and knowledge that will provide a solid foundation for their teaching, no matter what changes or pressures they face. Although the book contains many practical examples, it is more than a cookbook on how to teach. It addresses the following questions: is the nature of knowledge changing, and how do different views on the nature of knowledge result in different approaches to teaching? what is the science and research that can best help me in my teaching? how do I decide whether my courses should be face-to-face, blended or fully online? what strategies work best when teaching in a technology-rich environment? what methods of teaching are most effective for blended and online classes? how do I make choices among all the available media, whether text, audio, video, computer, or social media, in order to benefit my students and my subject? how do I maintain high quality in my teaching in a rapidly changing learning environment while managing my workload? what are the real possibilities for teaching and learning using MOOCs, OERS, open textbooks? In summary, the book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework and a set of guidelines are suggested for making decisions about your teaching, while understanding that every subject is different, and every teacher and instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching. In the end, though, the book isn't really about teachers and instructors, although you are the target group. It's about you help
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The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, Online Textbook
Deborah Bernnard; Greg Bobish; Daryl Bullis; Jenna Hecker · Open SUNY · 2014
Good researchers have a host of tools at their disposal that make navigating today's complex information ecosystem much more manageable. Gaining the knowledge, abilities, and self-reflection necessary to be a good researcher helps not only in academic settings, but is invaluable in any career, and throughout one's life. The Information Literacy User's Guide will start you on this route to success. The Information Literacy User's Guide is based on two current models in information literacy: The 2011 version of The Seven Pillars Model, developed by the Society of College, National and University Libraries in the United Kingdom and the conception of information literacy as a metaliteracy, a model developed by one of this book's authors in conjunction with Thomas Mackey, Dean of the Center for Distance Learning at SUNY Empire State Col- lege.2 These core foundations ensure that the material will be relevant to today's students. The Information Literacy User's Guide introduces students to critical concepts of information literacy as defined for the information-infused and technology-rich environment in which they find themselves. This book helps students examine their roles as information creators and sharers and enables them to more effectively deploy related skills. This textbook includes relatable case studies and scenarios, many hands-on exercises, and interactive quizzes.
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Educational Psychology
Kelvin Seifert; Rosemary Sutton · University of Manitoba · 2009
Chapters in the text can be assigned either from beginning to end, as with a conventional printed book, or they can be selected in some other sequence to meet the needs of particular students or classes. In general the first half of the book focuses on broader questions and principles taken from psychology per se, and the second half focuses on somewhat more practical issues of teaching. But the division between “theory” and “practice” is only approximate; all parts of the book draw on research, theory, and practical wisdom wherever appropriate. Chapter 2 is about learning theory, and Chapter 3 is about development; but as we point out, these topics overlap with each other as well as with the concerns of daily teaching. Chapter 4 is about several forms of student diversity (what might be called individual differences in another context), and Chapter 5 is about one form of diversity that has become prominent in schools recently—students with disabilities. Chapter 6 is about motivation, a topic that is heavily studied by psychological researchers, but that also poses perennial challenges to classroom teachers. Following these somewhat more basic psychological chapters, we turn to several lasting challenges of classroom life—challenges that seem to be an intrinsic part of the job. Chapter 7 offers ideas about classroom management; Chapter 8, ideas about communicating with students; Chapter 9, about ways to assist students' complex forms of thinking; and Chapter 10, about planning instruction systematically. The book closes with two chapters about assessment of learning: Chapter 11 focuses on teachers' own efforts to assess students, and Chapter 12 focuses on standardized measures of assessment. We have organized material and features in ways that we hope will allow for a variety of students, instructors, and institutions to use the book. For instructors and courses that seek a strong focus on research and the research process, for example, we have included an extra “ch
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Yet Another Introductory Number Theory Textbook (Cryptology Emphasis Version)
Jonathan Poritz · Jonathan Poritz · 2014
This version of YAINTT has a particular emphasis on connections to cryptology. The cryptologic material appears in Chapter 4 and §§5.5 and 5.6, arising naturally (I hope) out of the ambient number theory. The main cryptologic applications – being the RSA cryptosystem, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and the ElGamal cryptosystem – come out so naturally from considerations of Euler’s Theorem, primitive roots, and indices that it renders quite ironic G.H. Hardy’s assertion [Har05] of the purity and eternal inapplicability of number theory. Note, however, that once we broach the subject of these cryptologic algorithms, we take the time to make careful definitions for many cryptological concepts and to develop some related ideas of cryptology which have much more tenuous connections to the topic of number theory. This material therefore has something of a different flavor from the rest of the text – as is true of all scholarly work in cryptology (indeed, perhaps in all of computer science), which is clearly a discipline with a different culture from that of “pure”mathematics. Obviously, these sections could be skipped by an uninterested reader, or remixed away by an instructor for her own particular class approach.
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Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain
Randall Nichols; Hans Mumm; Wayne Lonstein · New Prairie Press · 2019
Unmanned Aircraft Systems are an integral part of the US national critical infrastructure. The authors have endeavored to bring a breadth and quality of information to the reader that is unparalleled in the unclassified sphere. This textbook will fully immerse and engage the reader / student in the cyber-security considerations of this rapidly emerging technology that we know as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The first edition topics covered National Airspace (NAS) policy issues, information security (INFOSEC), UAS vulnerabilities in key systems (Sense and Avoid / SCADA), navigation and collision avoidance systems, stealth design, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms; weapons systems security; electronic warfare considerations; data-links, jamming, operational vulnerabilities and still-emerging political scenarios that affect US military / commercial decisions.
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A Tale of Two Systems
René Reitsma; Kevin Krueger · Oregon State University · 2017
This is the story of a web-based information system rebuild. The system in question is www.teachengineering.org, a digital library of K-12 engineering curriculum that was built from the ground up with established technology and which for 13 years enjoyed lasting support from its growing user community and its sponsors. These 13 years, however, cover the period during which smart phones and tablets became commonplace, during which the Internet of Things started replacing the Semantic Web, during which NoSQL databases made their way out of the research labs and into everyday development shops, during which we collectively started moving IT functions and services into ‘the cloud,’ and during which computing performance doubled a few times, yet again. During this same period, TeachEngineering’s user base grew from a few hundred to more than 3 million users annually, its collection size quadrupled, it went through several user interface renewals, and significant functionality was added while having an exemplary service record, and it enjoyed continued financial support from its sponsors. In this monograph we provide a side-by-side of this rebuild. We lay out the choices made in the old architecture —we refer to it as TE 1.0— and compare and contrast them with the choices made for TE 2.0. We explain why both the 1.0 and 2.0 choices were made and discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with them.