Announced OER (Unreviewed)

The OER listed here have been announced through listservs, conferences, and other opportunities for learning about new OER titles. These titles have not yet been reviewed for inclusion within the main sections of this guide, but are gathered here to increase discovery and awareness of them for others and for the LCR OER Support Team.

If you have suggestions for this page or any other in this guide, please reach out to the OER Support Team at oer@ucalgary.ca.

Branching Scenarios: A Guide for Higher Education

This book is designed to provide educators with practical tools and insights to create dynamic, interactive learning experiences. By leveraging branching scenarios, educators can simulate real-world decision-making processes, fostering critical thinking and engagement among students. Our goal is to empower educators to enhance their teaching practices, making learning more immersive and impactful through experiential learning [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Career Cornerstones: Establishing a Foundation for a Career in Healthcare

Career Cornerstones: Establishing a Foundation for a Career in Healthcare is an Open Educational Resource (OER) that focuses on career skills required for students entering their respective health profession’s program. This book is designed to help students be successful not only in their health profession’s educational program, but also as they start to intern or work in healthcare settings. This resource is targeted for Healthcare Administration, Health Sciences, and Pre-Professional students. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through Open Textbook Library.

Climate Justice in Your Classroom: Weaving Climate, Environmental Justice and Civic Engagement into Your Courses

As the inequitable impacts of climate change become more evident and destructive, it is essential for climate and environmental justice, as well as methods of civic engagement, to be taught at a high-level to college-level students. This book provides real examples of how professors at the University of Washington integrated these critical issues into their teachings, both in targeted lessons and as throughlines across an entire course. These samples of how environmental and climate justice have been successfully integrated into higher-level education can serve as both a record of the UW’s progress towards centering JEDI at the heart of all students, and as a model for future instructors to use as they work to incorporate more aspects of justice and engagement into their own material. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through Open Textbook Library.

A CURE for Everyone: A Guide to Implementing Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

In this book, I undertake a review of the literature on Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) and present original data from a survey of instructors at the Ohio State University. The main goal of this publication is to be a practical guide for teachers wishing to develop and implements this type of High-Impact Practice in their course. As such, I cover many aspects of the development of a CURE, including advice on research development, group formation and management, evaluation and grading, inclusive teaching, and assignment design. A large number of activity templates and resources accompany the text to facilitate classroom implementation. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC

Decoding Deception

This textbook for adults and college and high school students combines clear guidance on critical thinking and fallacies with humor, comics, games, and interactive (H5P) activities. Our goal is to immerse readers in the art and science of detecting and deflecting manipulation. We are very proud to share this collaboratively-authored resource, which I hope will be as enjoyable to dive into with as it was to create. [Description from resource]

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Exploring Diversity with Statistics

These JASP walk-through guides meaningfully and purposefully integrate and highlight diversity research to teach students how to analyze data in an open-source statistical program. Guides with step-by-step instructions, including annotated images and examples of how to report findings in APA format, are included for the following statistical tests: independent samples t test, paired samples t test, one-way ANOVA, two factor ANOVA, chi-square test, Pearson correlation, simple regression, and multiple regression. Additionally, you will find instructor resources added with our Summer 2023 update. [Description from resource].

Includes: Downloadable PowerPoint Slides.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND (Note: this is an open access resource that does not allow for remixing and adaptation)

Reviews: Available through OER Commons

La hora del cuento en español: Storytime in Spanish

La hora del cuento en español is a collection of children’s stories in Spanish authored by Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) students and edited by KPU Faculty Constanza Rojas-Primus and KPU alumna Sofía Rodríguez. Since the first publication of this OER, we have now converted the content onto a WordPress website and created H5P activities for each story to support language-learning [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Illustration, an Introductory Course

This book offers a general introduction to illustration for the college-level student, with guidance for faculty using this book. Students will learn the basics of putting together illustrations for various purposes as well as professional aspects of the field. It includes assignments in botanical, poster, middle grade narrative, comic and picture book illustration, as well as illustration for self promotion. Student contributors offer their reflections on assignments and examples of their work.  Chapters on illustration for picture books, comics, and graphic novels are forthcoming. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Intro to Digital Photography: A Visual Language

This OER was created to make learning photography inspiring, accessible, and free for all. Authored by Prof. Emanuela Quaglia, with major contributions from talented DAA students, this book is designed for anyone starting their photography journey. It covers all the essential concepts and skills taught in an introductory course — from understanding your camera and mastering composition, to working with light, exploring creative techniques, and building confidence as a photographer. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Introducing Mathematical Biology

Mathematical modelling plays an increasingly important role in almost any area of life sciences, and this interactive textbook focuses on the areas of population ecology, infectious diseases, immunology and cell dynamics, gene networks and pharmacokinetics. It is aimed at anyone who is interested in learning about how to model biological systems, including undergraduate and postgraduate mathematics students who have not studied mathematical biology before, life-sciences students with an interest in modelling, and post-16 mathematics students interested in university-level material. Some mathematical knowledge is assumed, and the mathematical models used are all in the form of ordinary differential equations. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through Open Textbook Library.

Introduction to Criminology

Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships. Special thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for this textbook [Description from resource].

Includes: glossary, discussion questions

Licence: CC BY 4.0

In Your Eyes: Communicating in Close Relationships

This book was crafted for a new generation of people with an interest in communication studies, especially scholarship and concepts that speak to the role of close relationships in our lives and work. As you read through each chapter, you’ll meet new characters, ponder discussion questions, and interact with reflection activities that will get you to think deeply about various themes. This book is an entry-point into so many avenues for communication exploration and we hope you’ll see yourself reflected in the content. We encourage you to engage with this material with an open mind and heart—much awaits! [Description from resource].

Includes: Instructors can request access to ancillary materials, including test banks and slides.

Licence: CC BY-NC

Media and Power

Nutrition 100 Nutritional Applications for a Healthy Lifestyle

A primary goal of the course is to provide you with information backed by nutritional science, and a variety of resources that use scientific evidence to optimize health and prevent disease. This text was designed to support, enrich, and expand the materials provided in NUTR 100.  The text links to original research articles, reliable websites, and Wikipedia. If you are interested in a deeper dive into a specific topic, hopefully, you will find it here. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through Merlot.

Open Economic Guide

The Open Economics Guide is the central point of reference for researchers from the field of economics and business studies on the topic of Open Science. Practicing open research means basing one’s research on best practice procedures for scientific work and following good scientific practice. It enables higher quality, greater reliability and credibility, fairness and an increase of efficiency for scientific work. It can create new impetus for research and knowledge exchange, both within science as well as for the economy and society. The individual advantages that Open Science provides include greater visibility of scientific work as well as a greater impact in research and society. Open Science thereby leads to a number of improvements for individual researchers, the entire science system and society at large. In this guide, you can discover how openness can also enrich your research as an economic scientist. You will receive here an overview of the tools that make your work easier and receive support as well as useful tips to design your research so that it is open and to profit from the advantages [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY 4.0, unless otherwise noted

Our Voices: A Guide to Citing Personal Experience and Interviews in Research

Our hope is that this guide to citing personal experience and interviews meets our goal of supporting students to produce their own knowledge, as well as honoring the academic value of their lived experience and the experiences of their families and communities. Through the use of a set of guidelines we created for students to cite personal experience and interviews, we found students self-reported increase in engagement and success in academic assignments. We propose this set of guidelines are an important practical tool for critical, feminist, and anti-racist pedagogy, as well as a method for teaching ethical research. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through OER Commons. 

Past Makes Perfect: A Mini Handbook for Student Historians

This open access textbook provides a foundation for history undergraduate and graduate students to perform research. It also includes interactive scenarios for students to test what they have learned [Description from resource].

Includes: interactive scenarios

Licence: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Path to Funding: The Artist’s Guide to Building Your Audience, Generating Income, and Realizing Career Sustainability

Based on coursework developed at Peabody Conservatory, this book breaks down the process of developing an artist mission statement, generating new ideas for creative projects, and creating an engaging project description. It also covers methods for artists to identify their audience, generate a comprehensive project budget, collect compelling work samples, and identify potential funders to support their creative work. Written by a team of active artists and educators, this resource provides creatives with tools and strategies to communicate passionately and effectively about their work and take control of their financial and artistic future.

Includes: glossary, exercises, artist interviews

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Physical Therapist Assistant Mobility Handbook

This handbook guides the development of the knowledge and technical skills required for various forms of mobility and special topics related to patient care that physical therapist assistants are responsible for. It emphasizes safer care for patients by outlining clinical decision-making steps, practice samples, and case scenarios that provide the entry-level expertise and knowledge required to decrease adverse events. Includes videos of faculty and students demonstrating techniques. This handbook should be used in conjunction with existing courses in any health care program. This resource is not intended to replace core resources in health care programs that provide comprehensive information. An understanding of human anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology is a necessary asset for effectively understanding the content. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Preparing to Publish

This book offers a wealth of instructional material on the topic of research article writing for publication and thesis or dissertation completion. The text provides graduate student writers with helpful information, strategies, and tips on navigating disciplinary writing in their fields and how to understand, dissect, and ultimately, construct their own research article. The text is organized according to a standard research article format, breaking down each section of the empirical research in a simple and straightforward manner to help graduate students build a quality, argument-driven manuscript as they write up their empirical study findings [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Principles of Cultivar Development

Principles of Cultivar Development is intended to help you learn how to be a successful manager of a cultivar development program. In this text, you will apply the principles learned in Plant Breeding Methods to design a breeding program that makes effective use of available resources and alternative breeding strategies. By the end of this volume, readers will be able to describe the process for developing clonal, pure-line, hybrid, and synthetic cultivars. Each chapter includes additional readings and examples of how breeders have implemented the concepts in their breeding programs [Description from resource].

Includes: links to additional readings from publications shared openly by one of the co-authors, Walter R. Fehr

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Social and Regional Dialects of Spanish

This book presents an intermediate-advanced level course that employs preexisting resources and materials created by the author, Dr. Emily Kuder, to facilitate the learning of topics related to hispanic dialectology and sociolinguistics through openly available content. The book can be used by learners as a self-guided course or by a group of learners in a conventional class as a textbook. [Description from resource].

Includes: Discussion questions, links to relevant Youtube videos.

Licence: CC BY NC-ND (Note: this is an open access resource that does not allow for remixing and adaptation)

Social Data Analysis: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

Social data analysis enables you, as a researcher, to organize the facts you collect during your research. This book is meant to help you in your initial attempts to analyze data. In doing so it will introduce you to ways that others have found useful in their attempts to organize data. Our book is divided into two parts. One part focuses on what researchers call quantitative data analysis; the other, on qualitative data analysis. This 500-page book is designed for upper-level sociology students. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through Open Textbook Library.

Social Justice & Advocacy in Human Services

This text covers fundamental concepts, including power, privilege, and oppression, and explores critical issues like racism, gender, sexuality, poverty, religion, and disability in the context of the United States. The last section of the book hones in on the field of human services, discussing power, privilege, and bias in this context, and lastly exploring equitable distribution, human rights, and the systems and entry points within human services practice. The text provides many resources, videos, definitions, and reflection questions, ensuring readers have a solid foundation in social justice concepts. The authors also present real-world stories and examples, enriching the learning experience. The text offers educators and students opportunities to explore, learn more on their own, and take actionable steps toward advancing social justice. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Sustainable Property Management

Sustainable Property Management is a 150-page, peer-reviewed open textbook intended for students majoring in property management and real estate at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It can be incorporated into an existing property management operations course or used for a stand-alone course focused on sustainable property management. Although sustainability, as used in the real estate context, is about preserving the environment, it is about more than that. In sustainable property management, sustainability encompasses three spheres—environmental, social, and economic. Sustainable property management is about reconciling these three spheres throughout the operations and maintenance phases of the building lifecycle in such a way that a balance is achieved between economic development and the protection of environmental and social resources. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Reviews: Available through Open Textbook Library.

Ventanas abiertas I

This book is the first in our introductory sequence of the Spanish language. We designed it to accompany our Spanish 101 course at Gettysburg College. In it you will find sections on vocabulary, grammar, and culture, all with helpful links and videos to enhance student learning. Each chapter provides an introductory statement on its specific learning objectives as well as links to the individual lessons. In turn, at the end of each lesson there are communicative activities to work on in the classroom. [Description from resource].

Includes: Audio activities.

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Ventanas abiertas II

This book is the second in our introductory sequence of the Spanish language. We designed it to accompany our Spanish 102 course at Gettysburg College. In it you will find sections on vocabulary, grammar, and culture, all with helpful links and videos to enhance student learning. Each chapter provides an introductory statement on its specific learning objectives as well as links to the individual lessons. In turn, at the end of each lesson there are communicative activities to work on in the classroom.. [Description from resource].

Includes: Audio activities.

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Virtual Human Anatomy Lab Manual

This anatomy lab course is designed to provide a foundation of knowledge in human anatomy and identification of anatomical structure through engaging activities and clinical application. The course will take a regional approach, beginning with a brief introduction to histology, radiology, and body systems followed by three sections covering different body regions: thorax, abdomen, and pelvis; head and neck; and the lower and upper extremities. [Description from resource].

Includes: In text quizzes, interactive diagrams.

Licence: CC BY

Workplace Role Play Scenarios

This book has been designed to provide a range of workplace scenarios that can be utilised for experiential learning covering difficult conversations, negotiation and mediation. The scenarios provide learners with the opportunity to engage in different role-plays and provide learners with the opportunity to reflect on their experience with reflective questions. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-NC

Writing Arguments in STEM

The focus of this collection is on communication and argumentation in STEM fields. Students and instructors will find chapters on stasis theory, reasoning, elements of argument, information literacy, research writing in academic disciplines, data visualization, writing for STEM audiences, and specific genre conventions. This collection can be used in argumentation, writing, communication, and tech writing courses. [Description from resource].

Licence: CC BY-SA