This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education. It includes the work of 43 diverse authors whose perspectives challenge the dominant hegemony.
Material Type: Textbook
If you haven’t discovered already, there are myriad open resources that exist. Often the trouble lies in locating those that fit precisely what you need. We’ve broken down these resources with the intent of making the search process more efficient and effective. For each you’ll find a list of unique traits, licensing information, and an example of how to attribute the source. Click one of the media sources in the Find Resources sub-menu for the details.
Material Type: Lesson
This OER campus administrator guide, officially entitled "OER & Online Learning: Administrator Quick Start Guide, Strengthening the Shift to Online Learning in California Community Colleges Through the Use of OER", is an outcome of a project by ISKME, supported by a grant from the Michelson 20MM Foundation, to conduct a study and develop a set of resources to accelerate OER use for distance education, especially the urgent shift to remote learning during the pandemic in 2020. The Guide, created in collaboration with a selection of OER and online education champions across California community colleges (CCC), seeks to support community college administrators in California and beyond in more effectively supporting faculty use of OER as they work to address the reality of online learning in response to COVID-19 and future disruptions. The guide provides quick tips and starting points for campus administrators as they work to create the policy and practice environments needed to foster increased OER use for online learning. See the associated OER and Online Learning: Faculty Quick-Start Guide for more in-depth tools and resources targeted to faculty and instructional design support, at: https://www.oercommons.org/courses/oer-online-learning-faculty-quick-start-guide
Material Type: Reading
The Faculty Quick Start Guide is an outcome of a project by ISKME, supported by a grant from the Michelson 20MM Foundation, to conduct a study and develop a set of resources to accelerate OER use for distance education, especially the urgent shift to remote learning during the pandemic in 2020. The Guide, created in collaboration with a selection of OER and online education champions across California community colleges (CCC), contains: - Models and approaches to online learning, and to emergency remote learning in the context of COVID-19; - How and to what extent OER fits into these models, and local and state-level supports needed for its integration and sustainability; - Design considerations for integrating OER in online learning, including pedagogical and platform considerations; - Curatorial practices, such as using OER curation tools and aligning curated OER to learning outcomes; and, - Starting points and tips for colleges and faculty who want to initiate OER integration into distance education. Tailored to faculty and campus administrators both in California and beyond, the Guide has the aim is to enable system-wide shifts to meet postsecondary institutions’ long term goals for distance learning, and faculty’s emergency plans for remote learning in response to the COVID-19 and potential future crises. The Guide is also available as a PDF for download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17AXs30dZeLOrGeNBQ-ISc_OJXIxE9xtB/view?usp=sharing. See the companion guide for administrators at: https://www.oercommons.org/courses/iskme-michelson-20mm-oer-campus-administrator-quick-start-guide-public/edit
Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy
The authors propose that a professional learning community is a novel and meaningful perspective from which to approach program review, particularly when the community is embedded within a reliable infrastructure such as a course. The Program Review Course described in this Handbook follows an interdisciplinary cohort- and team-based model that is faculty-led. The course offers a reliable institutional framework for learning through formalized structures and nested support services. The course is housed in the office of quality assurance and coordinated and maintained by a quality assurance practitioner. All aspects of the course are available through a learning management system, such as Moodle. Program review teams are automatically enrolled in the course where they have access to timelines, templates, a discussion forum, and a program review handbook. During the 14-month course, faculty engage in a comprehensive review of their program and/or department. The course includes eight modules: 1) orientation, 2) curriculum mapping, 3) SOAR analysis activity, 4) surveys, 5) self-study report, 6) external review, 7) action planning, and 8) reporting results to the university community. This team-based course is designed to evaluate program performance in relation to student success, curriculum content, program viability and impact, and the program’s contribution to the university’s mission and vision. Program performance is measured through a combination of self- and external peer- evaluation. Through evidence-based inquiry and analyses, findings are documented in a comprehensive report leading to an action plan and goals for program improvement over the next five to seven years.
Material Type: Assessment, Full Course, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Textbook
Open Pedagogy Approaches: Faculty, Library, and Student Collaborations offers a diverse compilation of OER and open pedagogy (OP) projects grounded in faculty, library, and student collaborations. Open Pedagogy Approaches provides ideas, practical tips, and inspiration for educators willing to explore the power of open, whether that involves a small innovation or a large-scale initiative.
Material Type: Textbook
Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates
Material Type: Reading
An introduction to philosophy with selections on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and logic. The emphasis is on exposing students to important philosophers and issues in philosophy. Chapters include multiple choice questions to test reading comprehension.
Material Type: Textbook
This course will provide the student with an overview of the role that ethical, cultural, religious, and moral principles play in public policy. The course will introduce the student to common themes found in the foundational theories of ethics and morality in politics such as justice, equality, fairness, individual liberty, free enterprise, charity, fundamental human rights, and minimizing harm to others. These themes are integrated into various decision-making models that you will learn about. Students will examine five types of decision frameworks used to make and implement public policy, as well as rationales used to justify inequitable impact and outcomes of policies. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: explain how personal morality and ethics impact the policymaking process; discuss various ethical frameworks used to resolve policy dilemmas; identify statutes, ethical codes, and legal opinions that define the normative parameters of key domestic and international policy issues; assess the impact that public interest groups have on policymaking and execution of policies. (Political Science 401)
Material Type: Assessment, Full Course, Lecture, Lecture Notes, Reading, Syllabus
What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is ‘simulated', can it be immoral? This accessible and wide-ranging textbook explores these questions and many more. Key ideas in the fields of normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics are explained rigorously and systematically, with a vivid writing style that enlivens the topics with energy and wit. Individual theories are discussed in detail in the first part of the book, before these positions are applied to a wide range of contemporary situations including business ethics, sexual ethics, and the acceptability of eating animals. A wealth of real-life examples, set out with depth and care, illuminate the complexities of different ethical approaches while conveying their modern-day relevance. This concise and highly engaging resource is tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies, with a clear and practical layout that includes end-of-chapter summaries, key terms, and common mistakes to avoid. It should also be of practical use for those teaching Philosophy as part of the International Baccalaureate. Ethics for A-Level is of particular value to students and teachers, but Fisher and Dimmock's precise and scholarly approach will appeal to anyone seeking a rigorous and lively introduction to the challenging subject of ethics. Reviews available here: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/ethics-for-a-level
Material Type: Textbook
This series uses the Socratic method to build analytical skills and examine ethical questions. The programs aim to sharpen moral reasoning without favoring a particular position by exploring ethical dilemmas in legal, political, medical, corporate, and military arenas. Panelists include Antonin Scalia, Faye Wattleton, and Peter Jennings. A video instructional series on ethics for college and high school classrooms and adult learners; 10 one-hour video programs, audiocassettes.
Material Type: Lecture
A series of lectures delivered by Peter Millican to first-year philosophy students at the University of Oxford. The lectures comprise of the 8-week General Philosophy course, delivered to first year undergraduates. These lectures aim to provide a thorough introduction to many philosophical topics and to get students and others interested in thinking about key areas of philosophy. Taking a chronological view of the history of philosophy, each lecture is split into 3 or 4 sections which outline a particular philosophical problem and how different philosophers have attempted to resolve the issue. Individuals interested in the 'big' questions about life such as how we perceive the world, who we are in the world and whether we are free to act will find this series informative, comprehensive and accessible.
Material Type: Full Course, Lecture
This book is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning, particularly those who, to borrow a phrase from Pascal, are so made that they understand best through visuals. I have selected a small set of common errors in reasoning and visualized them using memorable illustrations that are supplemented with lots of examples. The hope is that the reader will learn from these pages some of the most common pitfalls in arguments and be able to identify and avoid them in practice.
Material Type: Reading
The Republic of Plato is one of the classic gateway texts into the study and practice of philosophy, and it is just the sort of book that has been able to arrest and redirect lives. How it has been able to do this, and whether or not it will be able to do this in your own case, is something you can only discover for yourself. The present guidebook aims to help a person get fairly deep, fairly quickly, into the project. It divides the dialogue into 96 sections and provides commentary on each section as well as questions for reflection and exploration. It is organized with a table of contents and is stitched together with a system of navigating bookmarks. Links to external sites such as the Perseus Classical Library are used throughout. This book is suitable for college courses or independent study.
Material Type: Reading, Student Guide, Textbook
This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is not a formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a critical thinking textbook. Downloadable as a pdf file.
Material Type: Textbook
The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one’s community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity
Material Type: Textbook
Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, Introduction to Philosophy surveys logic, metaphysics, epistemology, theories of value, and history of philosophy thematically. To provide a strong foundation in global philosophical discourse, diverse primary sources and examples are central to the design, and the text emphasizes engaged reading, critical thinking, research, and analytical skill-building through guided activities.
Material Type: Textbook
The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one’s community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity. Over the course of the text I’ve tried to outline the continuity of thought that leads from the historical roots of philosophy to a few of the diverse areas of inquiry that continue to make significant contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
Material Type: Textbook
The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one’s community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity
Material Type: Textbook
Philosophy is many things to many people and so writing a general introduction to philosophy textbook is bound to itself be an exercise in meta-philosophy. Because this is so, there will be disagreements not only about what is in the textbook, but also about what it leaves out. In the process of editing the chapters for this text, the philosophers in my department (Paul Jurczak, Christopher Schneck, and Leanne Kent) had occasion to hash out some of these disagreements. I believe the resulting textbook is better for it, not to mention that we as philosophers are all better for it. As will perhaps be obvious for those who read the textbook, the different chapters have very different styles. We consider this diversity a virtue of the textbook, although we understand that it does make it bit more unwieldy. For example, Paul and I have very different backgrounds in philosophy. Paul reads French very well and knows a lot about Merleau-Ponty; I read no French, but am fairly engaged with the cognitive sciences. Paul knows a lot about history, literature, and film; I don’t, but can tell you more than you’d like to know about what’s wrong with Jerry Fodor’s asymmetric dependence account of mental representation or why Saul Kripke’s causal account reference is important. As philosophers may infer based on these descriptions, I was schooled within the “analytic” tradition of philosophy, whereas Paul’s interests lie more within the “Continental” tradition of philosophy. These differences speak to the diversity of what philosophy is and they are reflected in this textbook.
Material Type: Textbook
