All resources in VIVA Open Skills Academy

Educational Psychology

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This books lays the foundation for prospective teachers to learn about various teaching methodologies and covers material typically found in many teacher training programs. 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.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Kelvin Seifert, Rosemary Sutton

Education for a Digital World: Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe

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Education for a Digital World contains a comprehensive collection of proven strategies and tools for effective online teaching, based on the principles of learning as a social process. It offers practical, contemporary guidance to support e-learning decision-making, instructional choices, as well as program and course planning, and development. Practical advice, real-life examples, case studies, and useful resources supply in-depth perspectives about structuring and fostering socially engaging learning in an online environment. A plethora of e-learning topics provide insights, ideas, and usable tools. Tips and evidence-based theory guide administrators, program and course developers, project teams, and teachers through the development of online learning opportunities. Education for a Digital World is an indispensable guide, resource, textbook and manual for policymakers and practitioners in developing and developed countries.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: David G. Harper, Sandy Hirtz

Let's Get Writing!

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A freshman composition textbook used by the English Department of Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) in Roanoke, Virginia. It aligns with ENG 111, the standard first-year composition course in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). The ten chapter headings are: 1. Chapter 1 - Critical Reading 2. Chapter 2 - Rhetorical Analysis 3. Chapter 3 - Argument 4. Chapter 4 - The Writing Process 5. Chapter 5 - Rhetorical Modes 6. Chapter 6 - Finding and Using Outside Sources 7. Chapter 7 - How and Why to Cite 8. Chapter 8 - Writing Basics: What Makes a Good Sentence? 9. Chapter 9 - Punctuation 10. Chapter 10 - Working With Words: Which Word is Right? This book was created by the English faculty and librarians of VWCC using Creative Commons -licensed materials and original contributions.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Ann Moser, Elizabeth Browning, Jenifer Kurtz, Katelyn Burton, Kathy Boylan, Kirsten Devries

Workplace Writing: A Handbook for Common Workplace Genres and Professional Writing

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This handbook is designed for a generalized business writing course that seeks to meet the needs of a variety of student majors and career interests. In it you will find: descriptions and discussions of common genres, both routine and formal, print and electronic, and in-class activities and sample assignments.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Anna Goins, Cheryl Rauh, Danielle Tarner, Daniel Von Holton

About Writing: A Guide

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This writer’s reference condenses and covers everything a beginning writing student needs to successfully compose college-level work, including the basics of composition, grammar, and research. It is broken down into easy-to-tackle sections, while not overloading students with more information than they need. Great for any beginning writing students or as reference for advanced students!

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Robin Jeffrey

Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future

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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.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Asao B. Inoue

Arguments in Context

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An Introduction to Critical Thinking Short Description: Arguments in Context is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking that covers all the basics in student-friendly language. Intended for use in a semester-long course, the text features classroom-tested examples and exercises that have been chosen to emphasize the relevance and applicability of the subject to everyday life. Three themes are developed as the text proceeds from argument identification and analysis, to the standards and techniques of evaluation: (i) the importance of asking the right questions, (ii) the influence of biases, cognitive illusions, and other psychological factors, and (iii) the ways that social situations and structures can enhance and impoverish our thinking. On this last point, the text includes sustained discussion of disagreement, cooperative dialogue, testimony, trust, and social media. Overall, the text aims to equip readers with a set of tools for working through important decisions and disagreements, and to help them become more careful and active thinkers. Long Description: Arguments in Context is a comprehensive introduction to critical thinking that covers all the basics in student-friendly language. Intended for use in a semester-long course, the text features classroom-tested examples and exercises that have been chosen to emphasize the relevance and applicability of the subject to everyday life. Three themes are developed as the text proceeds from argument identification and analysis, to the standards and techniques of evaluation: (i) the importance of asking the right questions, (ii) the influence of biases, cognitive illusions, and other psychological factors, and (iii) the ways that social situations and structures can enhance and impoverish our thinking. On this last point, the text includes sustained discussion of disagreement, cooperative dialogue, testimony, trust, and social media. Overall, the text aims to equip readers with a set of tools for working through important decisions and disagreements, and to help them become more careful and active thinkers. Word Count: 96327 (Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Thaddeus Robinson

BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English - Course Pack 1

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Description: This course pack is designed to meet the learning outcomes for Adult Literacy Fundamental English Level 1 (roughly equivalent to beginner to grade 1.5 in the K-12 system). Every of the nine chapters includes a level-appropriate, high-interest reading of approximately 100 words. The readings are freely available in a separate reader with convenient links to the readings in each chapter of this course pack. The online version of this course pack also contains audio recordings of each story in the reader. These recordings, combined with vocabulary and word pattern exercises, prepare the Level 1 student to read each paragraph-long text with greater independence. Font size and line spacing can be adjusted in the online view, and have been enhanced for the print and PDF versions for easier reading. This course pack has been reviewed by subject experts from colleges and universities.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Shantel Ivits

BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English - Course Pack 2

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This course pack is designed to meet the learning outcomes for Adult Literacy Fundamental English Level 2 (roughly equivalent to grades 1.5 to 3 in the K-12 system). Every of the eight chapters includes a level-appropriate, high-interest reading of approximately 200 words. The readings are freely available in a separate reader with convenient links to the readings in each chapter of this course pack. The online version of this course pack also contains audio recordings of each story in the reader. These recordings, combined with vocabulary and word pattern exercises, prepare the Level 2 student to read each chapter with greater independence. Font size and line spacing can be adjusted in the online view, and have been enhanced for the print and PDF versions for easier reading. This course pack has been reviewed by subject experts from colleges and universities.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Shantel Ivits

Bad Ideas About Writing

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Bad Ideas About Writing counters major myths about writing instruction. Inspired by the provocative science- and social-science-focused book This Idea Must Die and written for a general audience, the collection offers opinionated, research-based statements intended to spark debate and to offer a better way of teaching writing. Contributors, as scholars of rhetoric and composition, provide a snapshot of and antidotes to major myths in writing instruction. This collection is published in whole by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Cheryl E. Ball, Drew M. Loewe

Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution

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The University of North Georgia Press and Affordable Learning Georgia bring you Becoming America: An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution. Featuring sixty-nine authors and full texts of their works, the selections in this open anthology represent the diverse voices in early American literature. This completely-open anthology will connect students to the conversation of literature that is embedded in American history and has helped shaped its culture.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Wendy Kurant

Beyond Argument: Essaying as a Practice of (Ex)Change

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Beyond Argument offers an in-depth examination of how current ways of thinking about the writer-page relation in personal essays can be reconceived according to practices in the care of the self — an ethic by which writers such as Seneca, Montaigne, and Nietzsche lived. This approach promises to reinvigorate the form and address many of the concerns expressed by essay scholars and writers regarding the lack of rigorous exploration we see in our students' personal essays — and sometimes, even, in our own. In pursuing this approach, Sarah Allen presents a version of subjectivity that enables productive debate in the essay, among essays, and beyond.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Sarah Allen

Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies

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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.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Steven J. Corbett

Business Communication for Success

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This book is suited for Business Writing, Business English or Business Research/Report Writing courses.Basics of Written Business Communication presents basic business communication concepts, vocabulary, models, and exercises in a clear, practical, and engaging way. The author provides a set of core chapters intended to provide a highly focused introduction to the field. Then, he provides an optional series of modules that provide instructors with complete flexibility to emphasize additional topics of their choice.

Material Type: Textbook

Author: Scott McLean

Business Writing Style Guide

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In light of the cost of textbooks and education in general, we undertook this project to create a free resource to be used broadly by students in a business context. We wanted to provide comprehensive coverage of the writing process, but keep our topics relevant to business education. We hope that this textbook provides equal value to both non- and native-English learners alike. Just like we acknowledge that students will continue to develop their writing skills, we expect this project to challenge and further our own skills as writers.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: John Morris, Julie Swart

The Centrality of Style

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In The Centrality of Style, editors Mike Duncan and Star Medzerian Vanguri argue that style is a central concern of composition studies even as they demonstrate that some of the most compelling work in the area has emerged from the margins of the field. Calling attention to this paradox in his foreword to the collection, Paul Butler observes, "Many of the chapters work within the liminal space in which style serves as both a centralizing and decentralizing force in rhetoric and composition. Clearly, the authors and editors have made an invaluable contribution in their collection by exposing the paradoxical nature of a canon that continues to play a vital role in our disciplinary history."

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Mike Duncan, Star Medzerian Vanguri

Compact Anthology of World Literature

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The introductions in this anthology are meant to be just that: a basic overview of what students need to know before they begin reading, with topics that students can research further. An open access literature textbook cannot be a history book at the same time, but history is the great companion of literature: The more history students know, the easier it is for them to interpret literature.

Material Type: Textbook

Authors: Kyounghye Kwon, Laura Getty

Conventions 101: A Functional Approach to Teaching (And Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation

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A Functional Approach to Teaching (and Assessing!) Grammar and Punctuation Short Description: This is a collection of cumulative units of study for conventional errors common in student writing. It's flexible, functional, and 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. Long Description: This is a collection of cumulative units of study for conventional errors common in student writing. It’s flexible, functional, and 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. Word Count: 2751 ISBN: 978-1-63635-026-4 (Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy, Textbook

Author: Chauna Ramsey