New and Noteworthy is the City Tech Library OER Team’s monthly roundup of new and noteworthy open educational resources. We try to include at least one OER relevant to each school at City Tech in every post. At the end of the month, these resources will be compiled and distributed by the library liaison for your department. Please contact us if you know of new or particularly interesting OER to share with our colleagues or would like more information about open educational resources initiatives at City Tech.
Career & Technology Teacher Education
- Social Foundations of K-12 Education, by Della Perez, Kansas State University (2022). License: Public Domain
“Tensions in the relationship between public schools and society and their implications for teaching and learning are explored. The questions of what are freedom, democracy, instruction, power, and choice are central to the examination in learning and teaching for social change and social justice.”
Computer Information Systems & Computer Engineering Technology
- An Animated Introduction to Digital Logic Design, by John D. Carpinelli, New Jersey Institute of Technology (2023). License: CC BY-NC-SA
“This book is designed for use in an introductory course on digital logic design, typically offered in computer engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and other related programs. Such a course is usually offered at the sophomore level. This book makes extensive use of animation to illustrate the flow of data within a digital system and to step through some of the procedures used to design and optimize digital circuits.”
- Patterns for Beginning Programmers, by David Bernstein, James Madison University (2022, updated 2023). License: CC BY
“Programming patterns are solutions to problems that require the creation of a small fragment of code that will be part of a larger program. Hence, this book is about teaching you how to write such fragments of code. However, it is not about teaching you the syntax of the statements in the fragments, it assumes that you already know the syntax. Instead, it is about finding solutions to problems that arise when first learning to program.”
- The Shallow and the Deep: A biased introduction to neural networks and old school machine learning, by Michael Biehl, University of Groningen (2023). License: CC BY-NC-SA
“The Shallow and the Deep is a collection of lecture notes that offers an accessible introduction to neural networks and machine learning in general. … The focus lies on classical machine learning techniques, with a bias towards classification and regression. Other learning paradigms and many recent developments in, for instance, Deep Learning are not addressed or only briefly touched upon.”
Environmental Science
- Introduction to Earth Science, by Laura Neser, University Libraries at Virginia Tech (2022). License: CC BY-NC-SA
“Introduction to Earth Science is a 530+ page open textbook designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Earth Science that can be freely accessed online, read offline, printed, or purchased as a print-on-demand book. It is intended for a typical 1000-level university introductory course in the Geosciences, although its contents could be applied to many other related courses.”
Health Sciences & Health Services Administration
- Career Cornerstones: Establishing a Foundation for a Career in Healthcare, by Andrea M. Nelson and Katherine Greene, University of West Florida (2023). License: CC BY-NC-SA
This book was created for students entering their respective health profession’s program and is designed to help students be successful not only in their health profession’s educational program, but also as they start to intern or work in healthcare settings.
Law & Paralegal Studies
- Fundamentals of Business Law, by Melissa Randall, Community College of Denver (2020). License: CC BY
This book is an introductory survey of the legal topics required in undergraduate business law classes with twenty four chapters covering topics across business from the court system, the Constitution, to property and consumer law, among others.
- Professional Responsibility: An Open-Source Casebook, by Brian L. Frye, University of Kentucky, and Elizabeth Schiller, University of Richmond (2019). License: Public Domain
“This casebook covers a wide range of different subjects related to the professional responsibility of attorneys. While it is possible to cover all of this material in a three credit-hour course, you may wish to omit some subjects. You may also wish to supplement the materials in this casebook with additional materials. We encourage you to use this casebook in any way that you like.”
Psychology
- Psychology of Human Relations, by Stevy Scarbrough, Umpqua Community College (2023). License: CC BY-NC-SA
“Understanding human relations is a valuable skill for anyone entering into the job market. The aim of this textbook is to aid readers in understanding their own behaviors and the behaviors of others with the intent of engaging in positive interactions in personal and professional spaces.”
Sociology
- Social Data Analysis: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, by Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur and Roger Clark, Rhode Island College (2021). License: CC BY-NC-SA
Spanish
- Social and Regional Dialects of Spanish, by Emily Kuder, Connecticut College (2023). License: CC BY-NC-ND
“This book presents an intermediate-advanced level course that employs pre existing resources and materials created by the author, Dr. Emily Kuder, to facilitate the learning of topics related to hispanic dialectology and sociolinguistics through openly available content. The book can be used by learners as a self-guided course or by a group of learners in a conventional class as a textbook.”
Open Education
- Beyond the Horizon: Broadening Our Understanding of OER Efficacy, by Kaitlin Schilling, Rebus Community (2023). License: CC BY
“Beyond the Horizon: Broadening Our Understanding of OER Efficacy is a concise yet comprehensive resource designed to provide insight into the current state of research and reporting on Open Educational Resources (OER) efficacy. This guide explores existing frameworks, delves into key themes and gaps, and highlights emerging opportunities in the realm of OER efficacy.”
- Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation, by Kaitlin Schilling, Rebus Community (2023). License: CC BY
“Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation is a short resource designed to expand your understanding of inequities in the educational systems through breaking down the work into smaller pieces with opportunities for you to reflect, identify strategies for action, and locate resources and community members to connect with. The purpose of this guide is to explore strategies for you as OER creators to incorporate equitable practices into your workflows.”
- Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge, by Maria Bonn, Josh Bolick, Will Cross, Association of College and Research Libraries (2023). License: CC BY-NC
“The intersection of scholarly communication librarianship and open education offers a unique opportunity to expand knowledge of scholarly communication topics in both education and practice. Open resources can address the gap in teaching timely and critical scholarly communication topics—copyright in teaching and research environments, academic publishing, emerging modes of scholarship, impact measurement—while increasing access to resources and equitable participation in education and scholarly communication.”
OER Team:
Cailean Cooney, Associate Professor, OER Librarian: ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu
Joshua Peach, Adjunct Reference & OER Librarian: jpeach@citytech.cuny.edu
Jo Thompson, Adjunct Reference & OER Librarian: jthompson@citytech.cuny.edu
