This First Year Writing assignment builds on narrative skills and introduces students to informational and argumentative writing using minimal primary and secondary research as well as drawing on elements on visual rhetoric.

So far this semester you have reflected on the potential career(s) you are interested in and why you are in college. Now you are going to widen your scope to learn about the major disciplines of humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences that liberal arts courses make up and build on that knowledge to take a look at your possible major and career more specifically. It is important when thinking about a major to understand what job options that field of study can lead to and understand what courses are required. When thinking about a career it is useful to learn what types of positions exist, what skills are needed, and what those job positions are like on a daily basis. It is also equally important to remember that in college a major is not equal to a specific career. This project gives you the chance to explore all of that.

Using the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT kit, students construct experiments to measure the time it takes a free falling body to travel a specified distance. Students use the touch sensor, rotational sensor, and the NXT brick to measure the time of flight for the falling object at different release heights. After the object is released from its holder and travels a specified distance, a touch sensor is triggered and time of object's descent from release to impact at touch sensor is recorded and displayed on the screen of the NXT. Students calculate the average velocity of the falling object from each point of release, and construct a graph of average velocity versus time. They also create a best fit line for the graph using spreadsheet software. Students use the slope of the best fit line to determine their experimental g value and compare this to the standard value of g.

Critical Perspectives on Open Education

Short Description:
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.

Long Description:
Open education is at a critical juncture. It has moved on from its northern roots and is increasingly being challenged from its own periphery. At the same time, it finds itself marginalised and under threat in an educational sector infiltrated by corporate interests. However, rather than bunkering down, becoming blinkered or even complacent, the editors of this volume believe that the voices from the periphery should be amplified. This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education, an attempt at critical pluriversalism. It is a curated collection of 38 blog posts, lectures, talks, articles, and other informal works contributed by 43 diverse authors/co-authors and published since 2013. Each of these contributions offers a perspective on open education that can be considered marginal and that challenges the dominant hegemony.

Word Count: 3186

(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.)

Critical Perspectives on Open Education

Short Description:
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.

Long Description:
Open education is at a critical juncture. It has moved on from its northern roots and is increasingly being challenged from its own periphery. At the same time, it finds itself marginalised and under threat in an educational sector infiltrated by corporate interests. However, rather than bunkering down, becoming blinkered or even complacent, the editors of this volume believe that the voices from the periphery should be amplified. This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education, an attempt at critical pluriversalism. It is a curated collection of 38 blog posts, lectures, talks, articles, and other informal works contributed by 43 diverse authors/co-authors and published since 2013. Each of these contributions offers a perspective on open education that can be considered marginal and that challenges the dominant hegemony.

Word Count: 83220

ISBN: 978-1-989014-22-6

(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.)

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.

This project is unique because English teachers and other faculty volunteered their time over two
years to create this comprehensive and free textbook for students and instructors. This textbook is
an English teacher’s version of a love letter to our students. We love the written word and strive to
infect our students with that shared love and appreciation of language. Also, we have dedicated our
professional lives to help others reach their academic goals, and this textbook is a testament to our
ongoing commitment to help our students succeed and flourish in college and beyond.