26 Education
Building Democracy for All
Authors:
&Description: Building Democracy for All is an interactive, multimodal, multicultural, open access e-book for teaching and learning key topics in United States Government and Civic Life. It focuses on the importance of community engagement and social responsibility among middle and high school students—core themes in the Massachusetts 8th Grade History & Social Science Curriculum Framework.
Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research
Author:
m Ohio State UniversityDescription: This textbook provides a process for academic research and writing, from formulating your research question to selecting good information and using it effectively in your research assignments.
Includes: activities.
Communication Training and Development
Authors: William Arnold and Lynne McClure
Description: We wrote this book to fill two big gaps—the practical application of training and development principles in the field of communication. and the practical application of communication principles in the field of training and development. This book is more than just “about” communication or training and development—it shows you how to do it.
To use this book to full advantage, the reader can think of places he or she has worked or groups to which he or she has belonged, and see how the points and skills described in the book would apply. The practical nature of this book makes it applicable to innumerable settings.
The book will benefit university juniors and seniors in communication, management, or adult education. It is a must for training and development classes, and an excellent supplement for management courses and adult education classes. Instructors may want to assign student teams to conduct actual needs assessments—described step-by-step in the book-in local companies and organizations. Or, students could be assigned to present actual workshops—also described in the book—to the class.
So, if you are looking for a history on the progression of the field of training and development, we suggest you consult some other books and articles highlighted in the bibliography. We decided a practical, easy-to-read book could make a greater contribution to the development of effective trainers. We hope you will agree with us.
Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation
Author: Chauna Ramsey
Description: This is a collection of cumulative units of study for conventional errors common in student writing. It zeroes in problems typically seen in writing of all types, from the eternal “there/they’re/their” struggle to correct colon use. Units are organized from most simple to most challenging.
Includes: examples, worksheets.
Creating Online Learning Experiences
Editors: Matt Crosslin, Justin Dellinger, Rebecca Heiser, Katerina Riviou, and Brittany Usman
Description: This book looks at issues that comprise the online learning experience creation process. It is meant for for new and experienced designers alike, whether creating traditional online courses, open learning experiences, or anything in between.
Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Description: First published in 1916, this classic continues to influence contemporary educational thought. Considered one of the great American philosophers, Dewey grapples with the nature of knowledge and learning as well as formal education’s place, purpose, and process within a democratic society.
Design for Learning: Principles, Processes, and Praxis
Authors:
&Description: This book is divided into two major sections. The first, Instructional Design Practice, covers how instructional designers understand, explore, create, and evaluate situations requiring educational interventions and the products or systems used to support them. In this section, chapters address how we understand diverse learners and their needs; how to explore and frame the educational problems one is solving; how to analyze the context and tasks associated with the problems; how to iteratively generate decisions, prototypes, and solutions; and how to evaluate and understand the effectiveness of an instructional design.
The second part, Instructional Design Knowledge, covers the sources of design knowledge, a variety of instructional design processes, approaches for designing instructional activities, and the relationships important for instructional design practice. This section includes chapters addressing learning/instructional theory, design precedent, both systematic and agile design processes, and practical strategies for using technology wisely, managing projects, and creating instructional activities.
Designing Quality Tech-Enabled Learning Experiences
Authors: A van Barneveld; H Carroll; S Driessens; P Maher; and L O’Neill
Description: The overarching objective of this 4-module course will be to facilitate the development of any person who seeks to create quality, technology-enhanced (digital) learner experiences. Learners will leave the course able to take the best resources and experiences from this course and apply them to the design and structures of their own courses. This course was made possible with funding from the Government of Ontario – Ministry of Colleges and Universities. It was supported through the province’s Virtual Learning Strategy, by eCampusOntario – a provincially funded, not-for-profit consortium supporting the open education community at large.
The partnership between Lakehead University and Nipissing University furthers a collaboration that began with the Borealis Summer Institute for Teaching and Learning in August 2020 (a joint effort to provide professional development at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic).
Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education
Edited by: James McNinch and Marc Spooner, University of Regina
Description: This collection includes some of the leading authorities in the field, including Marie Battiste, Noam Chomsky, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith. It is geared towards courses that focus on methodology, colonialism, Indigenous research and knowledge, and theories of change.
Education Theory Made Practical, Volume 4
Author: McMaster Program for Faculty Development
Description: Medical education is not a discipline with discrete borders, specific methods and accepted theories, like molecular biology. Rather it is a field with fuzzy boundaries, informed by the sciences, social sciences and humanities and drawing upon their mix of associated theories.1 Neuroscience, sociology, and philosophy all have an equal place in medical education. Medical education is richer for such interconnectedness, requiring a negotiation and collaboration between different ways of seeing the issue confronting a clinician-educator. Deductive approaches to medical education research that use experimental data to support or refute a theory are complimented by inductive approaches, where theory is constructed from data without any presupposed starting position. In this way, medical education can use multiple theories to help make sense of the issues confronting learners, teachers and educators.2 But, unlike the clinical domain clinician-educators simultaneously reside in, there is no hierarchy of better/best theories in medical education. There is no one theory to rule them all. The issues in medical education are too nuanced and complex for such a rigid approach.
Education Theory Made Practical, Volume 5
Author: McMaster Program for Faculty Development
Description: Education There’s Made Practical (Volume 5) is the fourth volume in a well-established series of eBooks that aims to connect theory to clinical education. It continues our case-based discussion of core theories and frameworks in medical education. A collaborative project between the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (aliem.com) and the International Clinical Educator (ICE blog), this project has helped many clinician educators to gain a better sense of how education theories and frameworks can apply to their daily practice.
Each chapter has been written and edited by clinician educators for clinician educators, and then released on the ICE blog over a six month period. The posts are open for peer review by our health professions education community broadly, and then edited by our editors into this final compendium.
As with our previous books, each chapter begins with a common case that educators may face in the clinical or classroom setting followed by a discussion of the featured theory itself, its modern applications, and finally the case is closed by articulating how the theory could augment education practice. Additionally, we include an annotated bibliography so that readers can easily find additional resources for further learning. Each chapter can be read independently or as an entire book at the reader’s preference.
This book (and its source materials) were originally derived as a part of the Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAM or #FOAMed) movement and funded by the Government of Ontario’s eCampus Ontario initiative. We are thankful for the funding from our sponsoring agency to assist with being able to make this resource open access to the world.
The ELC: An Early Childhood Learning Community at Work
Authors: Heather Bridge, Lorraine Melita, and Patricia Roiger
Description: As authors, we chose the subject for this book because of what early childhood teacher candidates told us about their confusion between the theory they were taught in college methods classes, and, the teaching practices they often experienced during the Practicum field placement. We became interested in this subject because the teacher candidates were questioning, as good teacher candidates do, a troubling disconnect between early childhood theory and associated practice in classrooms. We were motivated to write this book because we wanted to share our model of professional development, designed to support both pre-service teacher candidates and, in-service educators together, during the Practicum field placement. Our lead author secured a grant to investigate these concerns and to implement a new professional development model designed to overcome them. The substance of this book reminds all of us, that in early childhood education, educators’ change through professional development, for improved practice that benefits children’s learning, is a constant.
The idea to write this book began a year after the grant ended. We were not quite done with all that had been accomplished and wanted others in the early childhood field to learn about our professional development model, which we know is still highly relevant today. It has taken us approximately seven years to complete the book. We overcame many challenges during writing, not the least of which was distance. The lead author now lives in the United Kingdom while the other two authors live in the United States. Technology was extremely helpful throughout the writing process. Skype was the best way for us to “see” each other regularly and to work out differences and correct inconsistencies.
IDEAL Distance Education and Blended Learning Handbook, 7th Edition
Authors:
, Destiny Simpson, & Jeff GoumasDescription: This seventh edition of the Handbook is the third to be created under the stewardship of the EdTech Center at World Education, Inc. Though its structure mirrors that of the previous editions authored by Leslie Petty and Jere Johnston (published by Project IDEAL at the University of Michigan), the content within each chapter has been rewritten to reflect the technology and attendant instructional shifts required for effective learning well into the twenty-first century, most notably the importance of blended learning in adult education and how to conduct programming entirely remotely, if necessary.
The organization of the Handbook chapters reflects important programmatic considerations for setting up a distance education program or expanding options for blended learning. The guidance provided and reflection required in each chapter support the development of practical plans for distance and blended education implementation. The end goal for readers of the Handbook is crafting a distance or blended education program planning document.
Facilitating online learning with the 5R’s
Authors: Joanna Lake and Hayley Atkins
Description: After conducting research and exploring current resources, we realized that while Indigenous pedagogy is being embedded (albeit, slowly) into BC curriculum, the learning experiences are limited to face-to-face teaching.
We decided to further explore the potential of embedding Indigenous pedagogy into online learning experiences, and used Kirkness and Barnhardt’s (1991) 4R’s guidelines and Restoule’s (2019) 5R’s framework as a starting point for educators and those involved in facilitating online learning. We chose this framework purposefully, as it was researched and created by Indigenous scholars. As white settler-educators, we want to acknowledge that for us, answering the TRC’s calls to action means we choose to deliver a curriculum that is not linear in nature. We used the 5R’s as a guideline and took the principles that were previously applied to Indigenous students and their communities, and attempted to use them in our own classrooms with our diverse range of learners. The purpose of this book is to form connected learning communities especially while engaged in remote learning.
We want to encourage educators to begin the work, and to provide support to those engaging with the resources which will inform individual teaching practices.
Foundations of Educational Technology
Author: Penny Thompson
Description: The current definition of Educational Technology, as defined by the Definition and Terminology Committee of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is “the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” (Januszewski & Molenda, 2008, p. 1).
Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology
Author:
Description: This book received the 2018 AECT Outstanding Book Award!
“What is this field?” “Where have we come from as a discipline, and where are we going?” “What do I want to study?” These and other questions are typical for new students in the field of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. This textbook is designed to help answer these questions and provide the quickest route to understanding the history and current trends in the field. After surveying classic theories and writings, as well as more recent applications of theory and practice, students will be better prepared to chart their own course and careers within the discipline. This book is designed to support foundations courses common in departments, as well as seminars on current trends and issues.
Guide to Teaching with Technology
Description: This guide is designed to help you plan, design, develop, and teach technology-enhanced courses and programs. We have compiled recommendations and suggestions from our staff of educators and technology professionals as well as from faculty who have experienced the process. We have included guides that illustrate pedagogical design issues; tips on planning, developing, and writing course content; as well as planning and facilitating online interaction. We have also included a description of various technologies to assist you in the process.
We have designed this guide to provide an overview of the entire process, from planning to implementation. If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to discuss your unique course dynamics, feel free to call or email us at any time, at edtech@brocku.ca or (905) 688-5550 ext 4734.
Hybrid-Flexible Course Design
Author:
Description: The book describes the fundamental principles of HyFlex design, explains a process for design and development, and discusses implementation factors that instructors, designers, students and administrators have experienced in a wide variety of higher education institutions; public and private, larger and small, research-intensive, comprehensive and community colleges. These factors include the drivers, the variations in implementation approaches and constraints, and the results (e.g., student success metrics, student satisfaction). A series of worksheets in Chapter 1.4 provides specific guidance that can be used by individuals or teams engaging in HyFlex design projects at their own institution. Case reports in Unit III from institutions and faculty who have successfully implemented HyFlex-style courses provide a rich set of real-world stories to draw insights for a reader’s own design setting.
The Information Literacy User’s Guide: An Open, Online Textbook
Authors: Allison Hosier, Daryl Bullis, Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Irina Holden, Jenna Pitera (Hecker), Tor Loney and Trudi Jacobson
Description: This textbook introduces students to critical concepts of information literacy as defined for the information-infused and technology-rich environment in which they find themselves.
Includes: case studies, scenarios, exercises, interactive quizzes.
Thriving Online: A Guide for Busy Educators
Editors: Robin H. Kay and William J. Hunter
Authors: Robin H. Kay; William J. Hunter; Sharon Lauricella; Chris D Craig; Alison Mann; Tricia Dwyer-Kuntz; Janette Hughes; Diana Petrarca; Rob Power; Timothy Bahula; Laura Banks; Wendy S. Barber; Joshua DiPasquale; Allyson Eamer; T. Keith Edmunds; Terri Jackson; Jia Li; Bill Muirhead; Mike Prasad; Mortilaine Riley; Lorayne Roberston; Robyn Ruttenberg-Rozen; Joseph M. Stokes; Sarah Ann Stokes; Diane Tepylo; and Stephanie Thompson
Description: This book focuses on helping educators (secondary school and higher education level) succeed and thrive in blended and online learning settings. Grounded in evidence-based practices and principles, we share diverse and extensive insights on starting out, differentiated learning, learning activities, feedback and assessment, and useful tools. Each chapter includes a subject overview, guidelines, activities or tools, and general resources.
Instructional Methods, Strategies and Technologies to Meet the Needs of All Learners
Author: Paula Lombardi
Description: For students: This eBook is designed to accompany your studies in EDU 607-703: Instructional Methods, Strategies, and Technologies to Meet The Needs of All Learners course, on your general special education teacher certification program track. It is an open resource, which means it was created for your use at no cost.
The text within this eBook are from open resources. I have made some edits to the text to make it more concise and closer to the everyday language of students in the US.
Citing the book: Please cite chapter content from the reference list at the end of each chapter and within the chapter as appropriate. If you are citing a linked resource, cite that resource in APA format.
Some of the resources within this book are “open access” materials, accessible free of charge online for your use, but they are not openly licensed. This means you cannot edit and redistribute them as you can with the Creative Common licensed content. These open access resources are the YouTube videos and some of the resources that are linked to within the book.
For instructors: you can use the Epub version of this ebook, and import it into your own PressBooks account and edit it there for your own use. Please be sure to include attribution, per the CC license below.
Interactive Learning in the Online Classroom
Author: Erin Courville
Description: I created this resource to help students in INST610 learn instructional design principals and apply what they learned to their Instructional Design Project. This resource may be used for other purposes, as described below, and is licensed through Creative Commons.
Introduction to College Research
Authors: Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent and Kelsey Smith
Description: The key to success in college research is to develop and hone your information literacy skills. These skills will prepare you to find and use information not only for college, but also in the workplace and your personal life. Having strong information literacy skills will make you a more thoughtful and effective consumer and creator of information, and will increase your awareness of and resilience toward the psychological, physiological, and sociological effects of living in a society overloaded with information.
Introduction to Curriculum for Early Childhood Education
Authors: Jennifer Paris, Kristin Beeve, Clint Springer
Description: This textbook is an introduction to planning curriculum for young children.
Includes: reflection questions, planning form, sample classrooms.
K-12 Blended Teaching: A Guide to Personalized Learning and Online Integration Volume 1
Authors:
, , , &Description: This book is your guide to blended teaching in K-12 settings. It was designed to help both pre-service and in-service teachers prepare their classes for blended teaching. Color and B&W print versions of the book can be obtained online at:
- PDF (Free)
- B&W Print ($6.54)
- Color Print ($31.28)
- ePub: coming
The figure of a building with four pillars represents the core organization of the book. This book begins by orienting you to the foundational dispositions and skillsneeded to support your blended teaching practice. Then you will be introduced to four key competencies for blended teaching represented by the pillars of (1) online integration, (2) data practices, (3) personalization, and (4) online interaction.The final chapter helps you bring all four competencies together as you implement blended teaching in your classroom. The chapters around these four pillars do not have to be read in order, though we have put them in the order that we think makes the most logical sense.
Definitions for words or phrases that are highlighted in blue can be found in the Glossary before the Appendices. Appendices contain additional source and resource information as well as examples of completed Blended Teaching Roadmaps for elementary and secondary school contexts.
Finally, the icons1 found throughout the book will direct you to external features, in-chapter challenges, and badging features that will help your learning.
The K-12 Educational Technology Handbook
Authors:
&Description: This textbook provides a set of high-quality resources to university educational technology courses. All chapters are written by professionals in the field, including university researchers, teacher educators, and classroom teachers.
The book in its entirety and each chapter can be freely accessed, downloaded, printed, and remixed. Professors of educational technology courses can select the chapters that will work best for them when creating course packets, and preservice and inservice teachers can use relevant chapters for trainings and professional development purposes.
Learner and User Experience Research
Editors:
, , , &Description: Researchers in the field of Learning/Instructional Design and Technology have been engaged in productive scholarly endeavors at the intersection of Learning Design, User Experience, Human-Computer Interaction, and associated disciplines for some time. This edited volume captures the collective voices of authors working in this area. This book focuses on explicating the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of user-centered design and user experience as applied in the field of Learning/Instructional Design and Technology with the goal of foregrounding the importance of learner experience as an emerging design paradigm for the field. This volume is comprised of 15 chapters and organized into three parts: (1) Methods and Paradigms (5 chapters), (2) Conceptual and Design Frameworks (6 chapters), and (3) LX Design-in-practice (4 chapters). This volume serves as a contribution to an emerging, transdisciplinary, and complex phenomenon that requires multiple literacies. LX is not only concerned with the effectiveness of designed learning interventions, but also with the interconnected and interdependent relationship between the learner- (or the teacher-/instructor-) as-user, the designed technology, novel pedagogical techniques or instructional strategies, and the learning context. The diversity and breadth of perspectives presented herein serve as a topographical sketch of the emerging focus area of learner experience and represent an opportunity to build upon this work in the future.
Learning in the Digital Age
Author: Tutaleni I. Asino
Description: This book is a work in progress; and will hopefully remain that way in perpetuity; where authors will come back and update their chapters and others will add more chapter. It is aimed to serve as a textbook for classes exploring the nature of learning in the digital age. The genesis of this book is a desire to use OERs in all my teachings, coupled with the realization that the resources that I was looking for were not available and as such I needed to contribute in creating them. This book is a minor attempt to contribute to the vast repository of Open Educational Resources.
Learning Management Systems
Author:
, , &Description: This book explores main concepts and topics involved in the process of managing Learning Management Systems (LMS) in corporate or educational settings. Definitions, features and characteristics of LMSs are introduced to familiarize the reader with the content. Types of LMSs are also covered in order to assist current and prospective instructional designers to identify and select an optimal LMS solution for their organization. Additionally, key stakeholders as well as the usability of the LMS will be crucial in the adoption and maintenance of the software, thus, another important topic discussed in this book. Furthermore, processes such as LMS selection, implementation and evaluation are explored in this book to provide an overview of the steps to be taken before, during and after an LMS adoption.
Learning to be Human Together
Editors: Rachel Spence; Fiona Rawle; Jaime Hilditch; and Jutta Treviranus
Authors: Co-designed by Students, Faculty and Staff at OCAD University, Mohawk College, Brock University, Trent University, Nipissing University, University of Windsor, University of Toronto-Mississauga
Description: This resource explores what humanizing teaching and learning means: to acknowledge that our relationships are foundational to the work that we do. It means to make learning inclusive with connection, access, and meaning-making at its core.
When you have something to say that you hope can empower people and encourage inclusion you yell it from the rooftops and in as many formats as possible. To that end, you will find the materials of this project in a number of formats — to meet you where you are and how YOU choose to interact with it. This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a deeply humanized experience. This material is not a book, nor a guide, nor a checklist–it’s an engagement with complex issues, with social entanglements, and with ways of doing (and not doing) things. This work also foregrounds the importance of twelve core super themes, such as trust, vulnerability, re-framing failure, and friction. These super themes are not discrete units or siloed entities, rather they are multi-layered ideas that intersect and weave together across the humanizing learning spectrum.
This resource also includes an exploration of the co-design experience – the process of creating and nurturing a community that collectively did this work. Coming out the other side of this work are a group of people who came together to share our love for learning and our passion for education. We hope you find something here that changes even one small aspect of how you move through the world.
Liberated Learners
Authors: Co-designed by Students, Faculty and Staff at Trent University, Brock University, Seneca College, University of Windsor, McMaster University, Cambrian College and Nipissing University
Description: Winner of the 2022 Open Education Global Award for Best OER. Following in the footsteps of the Ontario Extend: Empowered Educator program is its predecessor, Ontario Extend: Liberated Learners. The original program worked to prepare educators to be better able to teach in a digital realm. The Liberated Learner seeks to do the same for the learners themselves. As such, the project has four modules: The Learner, The Navigator, The Collaborator, and The Technologist. Taken together, the modules aim to enable a well-rounded and ready-for-almost-anything post-secondary learner. For Learners. By Learners.
Mathematics for Elementary Teachers
Author: Michelle Manes
Description: This book aims to help readers understand elementary mathematics more deeply, gain facility with creating and using mathematical notation, develop a habit of looking for reasons and creating mathematical explanations, and become more comfortable exploring unfamiliar mathematical situations.
Includes: activities, examples, problem banks.
Online Learning: A Student Perspective
Authors:
Description: Online learning has proved to be a major shift in learning for many students. There have been aspects to virtual learning, good and bad, that students have experienced. Over the past 3 months, eight CO-OP students from the University of Windsor’s Office of Open Learning have researched, collected data, and reflected on their experience of their online schooling. This eBook presents a student perspective of online courses and can be representative of a larger student population. Our goal is to provide insight to faculty on the impact of online learning on students. We hope this can be used as a tool to improve the design of online classrooms and the students learning experience. Online classrooms should, at least in part, be designed in a way for students to learn and succeed. Through videos, interactive content, and text, we will discuss major concepts of the online learning experience such as grades and assessments, course delivery, and communication. We also include a student Q&A-style discussion about the myth and reality of online learning.
Online Learning Toolbox
Author: Evrim Baran
Description: Online Learning Toolbox is a collection of seminal readings with commentary on different topics of online learning. Students taking the EDUC-507: Principles and Practices of Distance Education graduate course in Fall 2019 at Iowa State University contributed to the development of this open online source. This initiative is a product of the “open pedagogy” approach that I follow in designing the renewable assignments and projects in my courses. Open pedagogy is a participatory teaching approach in which students contribute to the development of the content they learn . As I was exploring the integration of open pedagogy activities into my graduate courses, I came across with the Open Education Reader, a collection of readings on open education, developed by Dr. David Wiley and his graduate students. This work inspired me to implement similar projects in other contexts (see the Learning Environments Design Reading Series and Aquatic Toxicology WikiBook).
Open Pedagogy Approaches
Authors: Alexis Clifton and Kimberly Davies Hoffman
Editors: Alexis Clifton, Kimberly Davies Hoffman, Robert Berkman, Eileen Daly-Boas, Lev Earle, Joe Easterly, Moriana Garcia, Deborah Rossen-Knill, and Kristen Totleben
Contributors: Robin DeRosa, Stacy Katz, Jennifer Van Allen, Cynthia Mari Orozco, Caroline Sinkinson, Amanda McAndrew, Shanna Hollich, Jacob Moore, Dennis E. Schell, Dorinne E. Banks, Neringa Liutkaite, Mantra Roy, Joe Easterly, Bette London, Christian Beck, Lily J. Dubach, Sarah A. Norris, John Venecek, Mary Lee Cunill, Sheri Brown, Tia Esposito, Daniel Dotson, Anna Davis, Amanda L. Folk, Shanna Jaggars, Marcos D. Rivera, Kaity Prieto, Lindsey Gumb, Heather Miceli, Sarah Hutton, Lisa Di Valentino, Paul Musgrave, Amanda Koziura, Jennifer M. Starkey, Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Joshua F. Beatty, Timothy C. Hartnett, Debra Kimok, John McMahon, Ashley Shea, Sean D. Visintainer, Stephanie Anckle, Kristen Weischedel, Carrie Baldwin-SoRelle, Jennifer M. Swann, Bryan James McGeary, Ashwini Ganeshan, Christopher S. Guder, Stephanie N. Lewis, Anne M. Brown, Amanda B. MacDonald, Laurie N. Taylor, Brian Keith, Susan J. Erickson, Denise G. Malloy, Sarah Siddiqui, Kimberly Davies Hoffman, Rose-Marie Chierici, and Amanda Spence
Description: In April 2018, Open Pedagogy champion Robin DeRosa introduced faculty, librarians, and graduate students at the University of Rochester to two different concepts—open educational resources and open pedagogy. Open educational resources or OER are free online educational content licensed to allow users “permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the material.” Open pedagogy or OP is classically defined as an instructional approach that engages students in using, reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing open content. Throughout her presentation, DeRosa emphasized the critical interdependency between resource affordability and effective education for all. She shared compelling statistics on the rising cost of textbooks and noted that affordability issues have increasingly discouraged many from attaining a college degree. She further introduced OER and OP as the foundation for fostering student agency and for shifting their identity as knowledge consumers to knowledge creators. This vision held particular meaning for one librarian in the audience, a librarian who had personally witnessed students taking the lead in their coursework and creating meaningful, impactful, long-lasting learning. Looking around the room at DeRosa’s talk, the librarian thought, “How can we inspire instructors to engage in open pedagogical practices?” “How do we impress upon them that the library is a natural partner toward this end?” and “How can we work together to explore this new territory of learning, paving a new path of seamless collaboration?”
And so began the idea for this book. Guided by a vision of collaboration and furthering OER and OP efforts, the editorial board includes both librarians and faculty, specifically, seven UR librarians, one faculty member (the Director of UR’s Writing, Speaking and Argument Program, WSAP), and an OER specialist from the neighboring State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo. Importantly, the anthology was envisioned locally as a professional development tool that might generate ideas and new course designs at the University of Rochester while equipping the editorial board with the skills to assist UR instructors with the future design of OER and OP. More generally, the anthology was anticipated to be widely shared and inspire ideas of OER and OP, designed collaboratively by faculty, library staff, and in many cases, students. In the spirit of open, the editorial board decided that the book should not be published primarily in print, but rather in collaboration with the Rebus Community through the use of Pressbooks in order to allow unrestricted access to ideas and information. The authors have licensed their work through Creative Commons, making the entire resource an OER.
Qualitative Inquiry in Daily Life
Author:
Description: This book is meant to teach researchers, evaluators, and practitioners such as educators how to use qualitative inquiry in daily life. Although this book may make the most sense if it is read in sequence, feel free to navigate to any chapter or appendix at any time.
The Roles and Responsibilities of the Special Educator
Author: Paula Lombardi
Description: The book is designed to accompany an introductory level general special education course: The Dynamic Role of the Special Educator. Many of the chapters in this book have been adapted from the The Parent Information and Resources comprehensive web pages.
In the original text the words “you” were used to speak directly to parents. The details of the material throughout the website and now this book, are relevant to most education professionals who are working with children with disabilities and their families. The text has been modified to focus on the role of the special educator. Additional text may be added throughout the eBook, by the author and collaborating educators, to clarify and expand on the content and tie it to course topics and assignments.
As you read through this eBook you will see many references to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act “IDEA”. In the U.S., the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a special education law that mandates regulation for students with disabilities in order to protect their rights as students and the rights of their parents. Sections of the law are coded and searchable.
Sharing our Knowledge: Best Practices for Supporting English Language Learners in Schools
Nadia Prokopchuk, Collection Editor
Description: At the end of a term, the instructor informs students that their final papers may be considered for inclusion in an OER essay collection. Essay selection has no bearing on student marks as this is done after course completion. Students must give permission for their papers to be published prior to inclusion in the collection. The overall goal of the OER collection is to provide PreK-12 educators (classroom teachers, administrators, EAL coordinators, language consultants, specialists, and others) with a source of current best practices and research. An added advantage is that the collection provides pre-service teachers with insights into the cultures and languages represented in schools today, as preparation for their future employment.
Teaching and Learning in Adulthood
Author: Tracy Smith
Description: What does the future hold for the field of education? Technology is going to play a big factor in education moving forward. Bryan Alexander is a futurist, educator, speaker, and writer who has written many articles on education. A new way of teaching is beginning to catch on in both higher education and primary and secondary schools. Studies are beginning to show that students learn best through engagement, cooperation, autonomy, group discussion, and other non-traditional ways of learning. Technology is playing a big role in this change in the way we teach and learn. Rather than the teacher be the only expert in the class and disseminating information to the students, the teacher is supporting students who are driving the learning experience.
Teaching in a Digital Age
Author: A.W. (Tony) Bates
Description: The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when all of us, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching. The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.
Includes: scenarios, activities.
Teaching Math for Emergent Bilinguals: Building on Culture, Language, and Identity
Authors: Ji-Yeong I and Ricardo Martinez
Description: This book is designed for pre-service/in-service teachers and others who will work or work with K–12 students who have linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, especially students of other languages (English language learners/Emergent bilingual/multilingual).
Teaching with Digital Tools and Apps
Author:
Description: This eBook highlights the key steps and considerations for finding, evaluating, and teaching with digital tools and apps.
Teaching With Rich Media
Author: Steve Covello
Description: This book was created as a response to emerging discussions with online faculty and program directors about what is possible in teaching and learning online beyond using just text-based instructional media.
The context of these discussions has been within my collaborative work as the Rich Media Specialist and Senior Instructional Designer at Granite State College since 2011. I have worked in the design, development, and formative revision of fully online courses in undergraduate and graduate degree programs and in facilitating faculty professional development programs. I have also taught fully online courses for General Education, Program level, and Capstone undergraduate courses since 2012.
I recognized in my own teaching and in my instructional design discussions with faculty that there was an opportunity to promote a vision of what we do as online educators that separates us from the conventions of face-to-face (F2F) education. We teach differently than F2F instructors, encounter different challenges, and draw upon different skills to achieve our educational goals. Teaching online isn’t an offshoot of F2F teaching–it is an entirely different species of teaching.
Textiles and Tapestries
Editors:
, , &Description: Textiles and Tapestries presents thought-provoking research that explores the intricate and complex weavings of teaching and learning. It reflects a compelling mixture of traditional and contemporary methodology, collaborations within and beyond teacher education, and allows space for considering the implications of current worldwide social, political, and systemic tensions. Importantly, it highlights the central role of self-study in creating insights and understandings of practice for transforming teaching and for generating new knowledge.
Contributions from established and novice academic researchers, teacher practitioners, and graduate students provide opportunities to learn with and from the voices of dynamic and diverse self-study researchers. Section one focuses on the process of exploring and making meaning from weaving inquiry, teaching, and learning from studying practices through self-study. Section two illuminates the act of making new meaning, creating the tapestries and textiles of knowing by attending to the tools and crafting in studying teaching and professional practices. Section three focuses on the formation of new tapestries of understanding as authors share the implication of their findings through self-study.
This book presents new methods, frameworks, collaborations, and understandings of practice that will be useful for teacher educators, graduate students, and self-study of practice researchers.
Uncovering The Hidden Curriculum (UTHC)
Authors: Nipissing University, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier University, Conestoga College, Fanshawe College, Western University, Huron College, London Health Science Center, Lambton College, University of Windsor.
Description: Curriculum broadly refers to the collection of content and experiences within a course or program. For the most part, the curriculum is quite structured, and expectations are explicit. Most educators are familiar with the word curriculum but might be surprised to learn that there are other curriculum types. These different types can be thought of as layers that interact with one another and contribute to the educational experience for students. The hidden curriculum is one of these layers that refers to the unwritten and unofficial lessons learners acquire implicitly and are not taught formally. The hidden curriculum is present at all stages of education but becomes increasingly relevant for learners who are navigating post-secondary learning environments and exploring career opportunities.
Because the hidden curriculum is often not explicitly taught, we believe it can have a negative impact on student success and mental health. Not all students undertake post-secondary studies with equal pre-existing knowledge of hidden curriculum skills. After all, access to this knowledge is heavily influenced by numerous factors such as culture and socioeconomic background. For example, the ability to network and make professional connections requires knowledge of norms and expectations that some students may not have had a chance to learn if the family or school they grew up in did not provide opportunities to learn these norms and practice them. Discrepancies in hidden curriculum knowledge between individual students or groups of students can reinforce social inequities and hinder access to opportunities within and beyond post-secondary education.
For these reasons, we created Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum. We believe that educators are positioned to promote the importance and relevance of topics that aim to target the hidden curriculum. Explicitly embedding this content in their courses promotes equitable access to knowledge and skills that will benefit students during their academics. Learning these transferable skills will also equip students to face a variety of professional and interpersonal challenges in their lives.
Understanding and Supporting Learners with Disabilities
Author: Paula Lombardi
Description: This book was developed to support the Granite State College introductory courses EDU 617 and 717, Students with Disabilities. Chapters 1-11 are developed to align with the disability summary assignments. Each of these concise chapters explains the corresponding section of the disability summary template. This eBook is a work in progress and will evolve as high quality open resources become available.
Chapters 12-23 provide an introduction to each of the 13 IDEA disabilities. Some chapters are more comprehensive than others, depending on the availability of open resources. These disability specific chapters are a good resource for anyone who needs a review or a deeper understanding of these disabilities and how to support these students in the classroom with research based learning strategies.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA)
Authors: University of Windsor, Mohawk College, University of Waterloo, University of Guelph, University of Ottawa, St. Clair College, Nipissing University
Description: The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) project was a collaboration between 10 universities and colleges across Ontario to develop a 6-module open educational resource for post-secondary educators to help them understand their responsibilities under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). It will help instructors and others to incorporate principles of UDL and considerations of EDI and Indigenisation in their learning environments.
Unleashing the Power of Learner Agency
Authors: Stewart Hase & Lisa Marie Blaschke
Description: This is the third book about heutagogy or self-determined learning since its inception in 2000. Authors from thirteen different countries describe their experiences of using the approach in a variety of contexts such as art, school education, higher education, digital learning, work, green education, personal learning, online learning, elementary learning, and research education. The book is designed for the practitioner by focussing on how to apply heutagogy within their own area of interest. The context of the book is learner agency, which we think should be the guiding principle underpinning education and preparing citizens to cope with the twenty-first century. Included is a chapter providing an in-depth and updated description of the theories and practice of self-determined learning for those wanting a more thorough background.
Web Design Basics for Educators
Author:
Description: With free web design tools like Google Sites, Wix, Weebly, and WordPress, you can create a class website, digital portfolio, blog, online course or tutorial, or another type of educational site with relative ease. However, there’s more to designing a website than just putting together some text and multimedia on a page. If you want to create an educational website that enriches and amplifies learning, then this is the book for you! This book will help you learn how to build an educational website that is accessible, visually appealing, easy-to-navigate, easy-to-scan, and increases learning of the site content. The book features five chapters that cover the fundamental skills and knowledge you need for developing a website that educates, inspires, motivates, and/or empowers readers.