OER Catalog

Taking up the challenge of navigating the complex world of digital humanities, Making Sense of Digital Humanities offers readers an exploration of the many ways scholars have employed the diverse toolkit of digital humanities to create a better understanding of the synergies and disruptions created by technological change. Rooted in a concern for the daunting tasks associated with teaching and learning about the digital humanities, this volume hopes to provide easy entry into a complex topic while highlighting how an understanding of digital humanities can transform our thinking about technology in the modern world.

This open textbook is intended for beginning students of Arabic in their first semester.  This OER is unique in its presentation of Arabic language content through theme-based modules. Each theme is addressed through vocabulary, grammar, reading, speaking, and writing components. Each chapter includes self-check embedded quizzes that help learners digest language concepts. The book is also designed with teachers in mind. Each chapter includes pair work and group tasks that the teacher can implement in class and other parts that can be assigned as homework. The focus of the book is to build literacy in Standard Arabic structure in a simplified and sequenced approach while emphasizing speaking skills. By the end of this course, students will be well prepared for building their competence in a sequenced and organized manner in the following parts of this series.

This book is for those whose financial management focus is on small businesses. For you, we adapt the traditional financial management themes emphasized in corporate financial management courses to meet the needs of small businesses.

Many financial managers of small businesses come from farms or agribusinesses. Others are interested in working for or starting businesses in the food or retail sectors. In most cases, these businesses aren’t organized as C-corporations impacting things like taxes, depreciation, and legal requirements around compiling and reporting financial data. They are rarely publicly traded which creates unique constraints to raising debt and equity capital and calculating required risk-adjusted returns.

These financial managers are interested in solving specific problems they face in family or small businesses. They want to know how to apply the tools they are learning—coordinated financial statement analysis, present value analysis, management of cash flow, measuring their opportunity costs, etc.—to the problems they face at home. As we started to work on the actual problems faced by these managers, it quickly became clear that corporate finance tools don’t exactly fit the small businesses they come from. Further, in attempting to tackle the problems they bring, we learned that finding and/or constructing the data needed for financial management is another skill set often overlooked and in need of development. In the end, after investing a lot of time, we found that—without adaptation—corporate finance theory as traditionally taught doesn’t meet the knowledge needs and application skills of financial managers of small businesses. We wrote this book to be a catalyst that enables students and managers of small businesses to learn the tools and skill sets that will help them make sound financial management decisions.

A reframing of past course offerings led to this student-led “Hookup” Culture course at Michigan State University in spring 2020 and provided students with content decision-making opportunities and a more profound voice as to their learning goals and outcomes. Dr. Denise M. Acevedo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and shared educator in the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (CISAH) facilitated student-led research, discussions, and subsequent publication of a text formed from students’ actual “hookup” experiences. Students defined “hookup” culture, read and chose two-course texts, and subsequently categorized areas in which they were interested in conducting additional research, discovery, and discussion. Students’ collaborative research and conversations, and individually written reflections, although well-rounded, invite additional questions into “hookup” culture. Why are many left out of the research, conversations, and publications of data, such as those in the LGBTQ, African-American, Asian, and Native American communities? How might higher education humanities programs facilitate and support research into “hookup” practices also within these communities to ensure equality in scholarly practices? Why is “hookup” culture still a taboo topic for many and how might additional student-led research and scholarly publications change the narrative?

Growing from Reframing History, a podcast about history theory and practice, Reframing Digital Humanities: Conversations with Digital Humanists, Julian Chambliss, Professor of English at Michigan State University, brings together a diverse group of digital humanities practitioners to reflect on theory and practice. From the question of public engagement and knowledge production to considerations of identity and cultural production, the conversations presented in this work shed light on the ways digital humanities offer scholars tools to ask humane questions. Are the benefits promised being achieved? Are the right tools and training available? Are we asking the right questions? In this volume, scholars deeply engaged in using digital tools reflect on their work and this dynamic academic field.

This open textbook is intended for beginning students of Arabic who have already covered their literacy skills and ready to explore language in a lively and interactive approach. This OER is unique in its presentation of Arabic language content through theme-based modules. Each theme is addressed through vocabulary, grammar, reading, speaking, culture, and writing components. Each chapter includes self-check embedded quizzes that help learners digest language concepts. The book is also designed with teachers in mind. Each chapter includes pair work and group tasks that the teacher can implement in class and other parts that can be assigned as homework. The focus of the book is to establish a sound basis in Standard Arabic structure in a simplified and sequenced approach. Additionally, each theme will include a conversation section in which a module on Egyptian Arabic is presented. While developing a solid foundation in written Arabic, the Egyptian Arabic component will enhance students’ spoken fluency and enrich their cultural experience in their language learning journey.

An open textbook for undergraduate Criminal Procedure courses that are typically required of criminal justice majors.  The book uses U.S. Supreme Court opinions to illuminate the definition of rights concerning search and seizure, right to counsel, and other aspects of the criminal justice process.  This open textbook seeks to make undergraduates familiar with judicial reasoning as well as the definitions of rights relevant to individuals who are drawn into contact with criminal justice officials.  The chapters give significant attention to police procedures and individual rights under the Fourth Amendment related to searches, including those using warrants and the situations in which warrant searches are permissible.  The book also covers rights in the context of police interrogation, including Miranda warnings and exceptions to the Miranda rule.  In addition, there is coverage of the exclusionary rule, right to counsel, plea bargaining, and trial rights.  It concludes with a brief examination of rights related to sentencing.  This resource challenges undergraduates to understand the development and changes affecting rights as new decisions are issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chemistry, Life the Universe and Everything (CLUE) is a transformed general chemistry curriculum, developed by an interdisciplinary team of a chemist and a molecular biologist, that aims to bring about evidence-based change in general chemistry. General Chemistry is a gateway course for many students intending on careers in scientific, engineering, and health care-related disciplines. While there have been many attempts to improve the outcomes for these students, little has changed over the past 60 years. Recent transformation efforts have focused primarily on incorporating student engagement techniques into the course, rather than considering what it is that is important for students to learn. CLUE is different. CLUE was developed using a design research approach that focuses on scaffolded progressions around four core ideas: structure and properties, bonding and interactions, energy, and change and stability. The course emphasizes causal mechanistic reasoning in order to help students move beyond knowing that, to knowing how and knowing why chemical phenomena occur.

Elementary Chinese II is aimed at those who have learned Chinese as a second/foreign language for one semester, using the OER textbook “Elementary Chinese I“.

This open textbook contains six main lessons, including topics such as school life, shopping, transportation, weather, eating out, and asking and giving directions. They are organized in a straightforward and well-structured manner that are easy to follow. Within each lesson, there are a set of two dialogues or a set of one dialogue plus one narration. The texts of the dialogues or narrations are created to provide real-life Chinese language to beginning learners. After the texts, vocabulary words are listed for them to study and review. Grammatical points are explained in English and example sentences are provided for students to understand. Each dialogue or narration ends with culture notes where learners can read and better understand the target text.