A reference of OER listed by subject area and discipline

Short Description:
The BCcampus Open Education OER by Discipline Directory lists a wide range of open educational resources organized by discipline. This directory is updated as new resources are identified. Note that textbooks in the B.C. Open Collection are not included in this directory.

Long Description:
The BCcampus Open Education OER by Discipline Directory lists a wide range of open educational resources organized by discipline. It acts as a referratory where the name of the resource, a link to where it can be accessed, its licence, and then a short description are provided. Discipline-specific collections are also included. Because this directory is updated frequently, as new resources are identified, files for the directory are not provided (but can be requested). A printed copy is not available for sale. Note that textbooks in the B.C. Open Collection are not included in this directory.

Word Count: 80855

(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.)

(This case study was added to OER Commons as one of a batch of over 700. It has relevant information which may include medical imagery, lab results, and history where relevant. A link to the final diagnosis can be found at the end of the case study for review. The first paragraph of the case study -- typically, but not always the clinical presentation -- is provided below.)

On admission to our hospital, the patient complained of severe abdominal tenderness, with peritoneal signs, and underwent urgent laparotomy. There were no abnormal intraoperative findings, and biopsies taken from the stomach, duodenum, and rectum were normal. Gastroscopy and colonoscopy were performed, and were unrevealing. Post-operatively, the patient was encephalopathic, and minimally responsive. MRI of the brain again demonstrated abundant T2/FLAIR hyperintense (non-enhancing) lesions in the periventricular white matter and corpus callosum (Fig 1A; axial FLAIR sequence), consistent with central nervous system (CNS) demyelination. A small focus of enhancing T2/FLAIR signal hyperintensity in the right thalamus was suggestive of chronic thalamic stroke. The dura was diffusely thickened, and uniformly enhancing, following administration of gadolinium (Fig 1B; axial T1 gadolinium sequence). The differential diagnosis of this new dural process included infectious, malignant, and autoimmune causes. Clinically, the patient continued to deteriorate, and expired three days later.

(This case study was added to OER Commons as one of a batch of over 700. It has relevant information which may include medical imagery, lab results, and history where relevant. A link to the final diagnosis can be found at the end of the case study for review. The first paragraph of the case study -- typically, but not always the clinical presentation -- is provided below.)

A 70 year-old man presented with a 8 year history of cognitive decline. Initial presenting signs included mild memory loss, behavioural disturbances, and transient episodes of disorientation. Neurological examination revealed frontal release signs, including severe confusion, hallucinations and bilateral grasping, pyramidal signs, facial dyskinesia and dysmetria. During this first hospitalization, his "mini mental status" (MMS) was quoted as 25/30. Laboratory investigations showed undetectable ceruloplasmin in serum, increased ferritin (1777 µg/L - normal 30-300) and a slight decrease of serum iron (11,8µmol/l -normal 12-30) and copper (0.06 mg/l - normal 0.8-1.4) levels. Fundus oculi was normal; there was neither Kayser-Fleischer ring nor retinal abnormality. There were no signs of diabetes mellitus. Brain MRI revealed bilateral increased signal intensities of deep nuclei on T1 weighted that were more marked on T2 weighted sequences. The abnormalities involved predominantly the putamen, caudate nucleus, pulvinar, and dentate nucleus. Contrast infusion did not show any signal modification. (Figures 1 and 2). Due to a suspicion of hemochromatosis, a liver biopsy was performed. It showed normal liver architecture, absence of cirrhosis and marked iron deposition. Aspirated bone marrow showed normal cytology and cellular count but massive iron deposition.

Host Brenna Clarke Gray (Thompson Rivers University) and guest Autumm Caines (University of Michigan - Dearborn) explore the pedagogical implications of generative AI in this conversation in honour of Open Education Week. They ask such questions as:
- What happens when we leap into new technologies without first pausing to imagine harms, such as surveillance, bias, and discrimination?
- Can recentering the core values of the open education movement—equity, inclusion, transparency, and social justice—in our pedagogy help us move forward in a good way?
- How do we introduce these considerations to our students and empower them to make informed decisions with new technologies?

This course is a project-based introduction to manipulating and characterizing cells and biological molecules using microfabricated tools. It is designed for first year undergraduate students. In the first half of the term, students perform laboratory exercises designed to introduce (1) the design, manufacture, and use of microfluidic channels, (2) techniques for sorting and manipulating cells and biomolecules, and (3) making quantitative measurements using optical detection and fluorescent labeling. In the second half of the term, students work in small groups to design and test a microfluidic device to solve a real-world problem of their choosing. Includes exercises in written and oral communication and team building.

A critical inquiry into the politics, practices, and infrastructures of open access and the reconfiguration of scholarly communication in digital societies.

The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work—to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological or policy vacuum; there are complex social, political, cultural, philosophical, and economic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access from the perspectives of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities. The contributors consider such topics as the perpetuation of colonial-era inequalities in research production and promulgation; the historical evolution of peer review; the problematic histories and discriminatory politics that shape our choices of what materials to preserve; the idea of scholarship as data; and resistance to the commercialization of platforms. Case studies report on such initiatives as the Making and Knowing Project, which created an openly accessible critical digital edition of a sixteenth-century French manuscript, the role of formats in Bruno Latour's An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), a network of more than 1,200 journals from sixteen countries. Taken together, the contributions represent a substantive critical engagement with the politics, practices, infrastructures, and imaginaries of open access, suggesting alternative trajectories, values, and possible futures.

In the fall of 2021, students in Pseudoscience courses started creating this open educational resource (OER), which has been built upon by subsequent classes. Our intention is to create a free textbook for this course that might also be used by students of critical thinking elsewhere and of all ages, whether in a classroom or not. Our growing, interactive textbook employs the Paul-Elder Model and other critical-thinking resources, and is freely available to all, learners and educators alike.

The topic of pseudoscience offers a rewarding way for students to learn the value of thinking critically, even as they get to argue things, like Flat Earth Theory and astrology, that may seem trivial at first. At a time when truth is understood as largely subjective, we have, not surprisingly, seen a resurgence in the popularity of pseudosciences and conspiracy theories, which many consider to hold significant truth value, just as valid as physical evidence. It is our aim here to demonstrate the reasoned analysis process — weighing truth, belief, opinion, and fact — so that others may be able to replicate this process and reason through their own questions about vaccines, extra-terrestrials, genetic modification, or the first people to arrive in the Americas.

Students use compasses and bar magnets to simulate the collection of sea floor magnetic polarity data. Even though the students do not directly observe the magnets, they use the information to infer tectonic processes present at the mid-ocean ridges and calculate the spreading rates for two different ridges.

Students learn about potential safety and health concerns of personal hygiene products. Students examine labels and advertisements of these projects and then engage in rhetorical and cultural analysis of these advertisements.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Current concerns about reproducibility in many research communities can be traced back to a high value placed on empirical reproducibility of the physical details of scientific experiments and observations. For example, the detailed descriptions by 17th century scientist Robert Boyle of his vacuum pump experiments are often held to be the ideal of reproducibility as a cornerstone of scientific practice. Victoria Stodden has claimed that the computer is an analog for Boyle’s pump – another kind of scientific instrument that needs detailed descriptions of how it generates results. In the place of Boyle’s hand-written notes, we now expect code in open source programming languages to be available to enable others to reproduce and extend computational experiments. In this paper we show that there is another genealogy for reproducibility, starting at least from Euclid, in the production of proofs in mathematics. Proofs have a distinctive quality of being necessarily reproducible, and are the cornerstone of mathematical science. However, the task of the modern mathematical scientist has drifted from that of blackboard rhetorician, where the craft of proof reigned, to a scientific workflow that now more closely resembles that of an experimental scientist. So, what is proof in modern mathematics? And, if proof is unattainable in other fields, what is due scientific diligence in a computational experimental environment? How do we measure truth in the context of uncertainty? Adopting a manner of Lakatosian conversant conjecture between two mathematicians, we examine how proof informs our practice of computational statistical inquiry. We propose that a reorientation of mathematical science is necessary so that its reproducibility can be readily assessed.

Students use Google Earth to observe two river systems and characterize changes in gradient from the headwaters to the mouth, and relate changes in those gradients to different rock types. At one location, they observe historical changes in the river and infer how sediment erosion and deposition can alter a stream channel. Students also observe some ways in which humans attempt to prevent bank erosion.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

In this unit, students examine detailed hydrologic data from one river to identify ways in which precipitation and stream discharge influence flooding which often impacts nearby human societies. They also research a local river and determine the hazard associated with flooding, describe historic flooding, and assess ways a local community mitigates the risks associated with flooding.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Software Carpentry lesson on how to use the shell to navigate the filesystem and write simple loops and scripts. The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.

This guide has been created by bibliometric practitioners to support other users of InCites, a research analytics tool from Clarivate Analytics that uses bibliographic data from Web of Science; the guide promotes a community of informed and responsible use of research impact metrics. The recommendations in this document may be more suited to other academic sector users, but the authors hope that other users may also benefit from the suggestions. The guide aims to provide plain-English definitions, key strengths and weaknesses and some practical application tips for some of the most commonly-used indicators available in InCites. The indicator definitions are followed by explanations of the data that powers InCites, attempting to educate users on where the data comes from and how the choices made in selecting and filtering data will impact on final results. Also in this document are a comparative table to highlight differences between indicators in InCites and SciVal, another commonly used bibliometric analytic programme, and instructions on how to run group reports. All of the advice in this document is underpinned by a belief in the need to use InCites in a way that respects the limitations of indicators as quantitative assessors of research outputs. Both of the authors are members of signatory institutions of DORA, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. A summary of advice to using indicators and bibliometric data responsibly is available on pages 4-5 and should be referred to throughout. Readers are also recommended to refer to the official InCites Indicators Handbook produced by Clarivate Analytics. The guide was written with complete editorial independence from Clarivate Analytics, the owners of InCites. Clarivate Analytics supported the authors of this document with checking for factual accuracy only.

Students first explore different materials to see what types reduce the most amount of sound when placed in a box. Each group is assigned a different material and they fill their box with that specific material. Students measure the sound level of a tone playing from inside the box using a decibel reader from outside the box. Students share this data with the class and analyze which types of materials absorb the most sound and which reflect the most sound.

This course develops language skills needed to communicate effectively in college study, in the professions,and in the business world. The course includes sentence formation, applied grammar, spelling, mechanics,and paragraph development. All course content created by Katie (Slezas) Durant Content added to OER Commons by Joanna Gray 

Computational tools for data analysis are being released daily on repositories such as the Comprehensive R Archive Network. How we integrate these tools to solve a problem in research is increasingly complex and requiring frequent updates. In this manuscript we propose a toolchain walkthrough, an opinionated documentation of a scientific workflow. As a practical complement to our proof-based argument (Gray and Marwick, arXiv, 2019) for reproducible data analysis, here we focus on the practicality of setting up a research compendia with unit tests as a measure of code::proof, a reproducible research compendia that provides a measure of confidence in computational algorithms.