Open Educational Resources: School of Natural and Social Sciences

Anthropology is the study of all humans in all times in all places. But it is so much more than that. “Anthropology requires strength, valor, and courage,” Nancy Scheper-Hughes noted. “Pierre Bourdieu called anthropology a combat sport, an extreme sport as well as a tough and rigorous discipline. … It teaches students not to be afraid of getting one’s hands dirty, to get down in the dirt, and to commit yourself, body and mind. Susan Sontag called anthropology a “heroic” profession.” What is the payoff for this heroic journey? You will find ideas that can carry you across rivers of doubt and over mountains of fear to find the the light and life of places forgotten. Real anthropology cannot be contained in a book. You have to go out and feel the world’s jagged edges, wipe its dust from your brow, and at times, leave your blood in its soil. In this unique book, Dr. Michael Wesch shares many of his own adventures of being an anthropologist and what the science of human beings can tell us about the art of being human.

Anthropology is the study of humanity, in all its biological and cultural aspects, past and present. It is a four-field discipline comprised of biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology. The focus of this book is biological anthropology, which explores who we are from biological, evolutionary, and adaptive perspectives.

Where did we come from? What were our ancestors like? Why do we differ from other animals? How do scientists trace and construct our evolutionary history? The History of Our Tribe: Hominini provides answers to these questions and more. The book explores the field of paleoanthropology past and present. Beginning over 65 million years ago, Welker traces the evolution of our species, the environments and selective forces that shaped our ancestors, their physical and cultural adaptations, and the people and places involved with their discovery and study. It is designed as a textbook for a course on Human Evolution but can also serve as an introductory text for relevant sections of courses in Biological or General Anthropology or general interest. It is both a comprehensive technical reference for relevant terms, theories, methods, and species and an overview of the people, places, and discoveries that have imbued paleoanthropology with such fascination, romance, and mystery.

Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, OpenStax Introduction to Anthropology is a four-field text integrating diverse voices, engaging field activities, and meaningful themes like Indigenous experiences and social inequality to engage students and enrich learning. The text showcases the historical context of the discipline, with a strong focus on anthropology as a living and evolving field. There is significant discussion of recent efforts to make the field more diverse—in its practitioners, in the questions it asks, and in the applications of anthropological research to address contemporary challenges. In addressing social inequality, the text drives readers to consider the rise and impact of social inequalities based on forms of identity and difference (such as gender, ethnicity, race, and class) as well as oppression and discrimination. The contributors to and dangers of socioeconomic inequality are fully addressed, and the role of inequality in social dysfunction, disruption, and change is noted.

Intended to be an introductory text about the Native peoples of North America (primarily the United States and Canada) presented from an anthropological perspective.

We are delighted to bring to you this novel textbook, a collection of chapters on the essential topics in cultural anthropology. Different from other introductory textbooks, this book is an edited volume with each chapter written by a different author. Each author has written from their experiences working as an anthropologist and that personal touch makes for an accessible introduction to cultural anthropology.

Shared Voices is a student-centered cultural anthropology mini textbook built with an equity lens. We are excited to share this with you all. This book attempts to address the lack of current, reliable, and relevant resources for introductory anthropology courses that center equity and anti-racism.

A dynamic textbook for the two-semester human anatomy and physiology course for life science and allied health majors. The book is organized by body system and covers standard scope and sequence requirements.

A one- (evolving into two) semester introductory course on the evolutionary, molecular, genetic, genomic & systems foundations of modern biology

Contains hundreds of multimedia resources, including apps, animations, videos, interactive, and virtual labs, to bring the excitement of scientific discovery into your classroom.

Covers the scope and sequence requirements of a typical two-semester biology course for science majors. The text provides comprehensive coverage of foundational research and core biology concepts through an evolutionary lens.

Open educational resources (OER) are free and (re)distributable teaching materials. This site is a sponsored by the Ursula Schwerin Library to select and curate resources for use in General Biology 1. This was extended to include Molecular & Cell Biology through the U.S. Department of Education Title V Grant, “A Living Lab“. In the spirit of remixing and redistribution, the entire WordPress site can be downloaded from GitHub as well as customized imagery (https://github.com/jeremyseto/bio-oer).

Focuses on experimental support for what we know about cell and molecular biology. Written to serve as the introductory biology course for biology majors with high school chemistry and biology prerequisites as well as for “gateway” cell and molecular biology courses for students with a college-level general biology and general chemistry course background.

Designed for the typical introductory biology course for non-majors, covering standard scope and sequence requirements.

Microbiology covers the scope and sequence requirements for a single-semester microbiology course for non-majors. The book presents the core concepts of microbiology with a focus on applications for careers in allied health. The pedagogical features of the text make the material interesting and accessible while maintaining the career-application focus and scientific rigor inherent in the subject matter. Microbiology’s art program enhances students’ understanding of concepts through clear and effective illustrations, diagrams, and photographs.

Red Seal Landscape Horticulturist Identify Plants and Plant Requirements is an adaptation of KPU HORT 1155 Introduction to Plant Materials Lecture Notes. This first edition supports student achievement of the Level 1 and 2 learning goals for Red Seal Landscape Horticulturist Line F2.

This lab manual was created for BIOL 1107, Principles of Biology I, through an ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Copies of this lab manual by chapter are also available at http://libguides.daltonstate.edu/PrinciplesofBiology/labmanual.

Chemistry is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the two-semester general chemistry course. Students earn the core concepts of chemistry and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them.

Written by William Reusch, this virtual textbook allows for visualization of 3D-molecular models while teaching principles of Organic Chemistry.

Represents a step in the evolution of the general chemistry text that reflects the increasing overlap between chemistry and other disciplines. Discusses exciting and relevant aspects of biological, environmental, and materials science usually relegated to the last few chapters, and provides a format that allows the instructor to tailor the emphasis to the needs of the class.

Supplemental videos that cover topics of Organic Chemistry ranging from organic structures, stereochemistry, and carboxylic acids.

This text is intended to provide an in-depth introduction to the key ideas in chemistry. We have designed the book to show how these ideas are developed from simple to complex systems and how they relate to each other. We consider three ideas central to an understanding of chemistry: the structure of matter, the properties of matter, and the energy changes involved in the reorganization of matter; all are connected by the interactions or forces that cause matter to interact. We aim to provide compelling reasons why you will find yourself wanting to learn chemistry and to illustrate what you will be able to do with this knowledge once you have learned it.

An introduction to Operating Systems for programmers. Includes material from operating systems, networks, databases, and embedded systems. It emphasizes the topics programmers need to know.

An introduction to programming in MATLAB and simulation of physical systems.

There are many books on global warming written entirely from a layman's perspective, and there is a great deal of scientific literature on this subject. But few if any books attempt to bridge the science to those who lack a rigorous background in mathematics, physics and chemistry-but who may be working on careers in environmental science and policy. The new text is designed to introduce the field of global climate change from a scientific perspective-but written in a way that is accessible to students with some or little science background. It reviews the basic principles of climatic thermodynamics and atmospheric chemistry and then goes on to explain historic trends and changes due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human-based activity on earth.

This book focuses on the study of the remarkable new source of geographic information that has become available in the form of user-generated content accessible over the Internet through mobile and Web applications. The exploitation, integration and application of these sources, termed volunteered geographic information (VGI) or crowdsourced geographic information (CGI), offer scientists an unprecedented opportunity to conduct research on a variety of topics at multiple scales and for diversified objectives.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Data Visualization Applications are driving forces behind the recent explosion in the "Digital Humanities." They enable scholars and students alike to ask new kinds of questions, and to illustrate the answers in powerful ways. This site intends to provide an overview of popular GIS and DVA platforms, both proprietary and open access. It summarizes the degree of difficulty involved in using these platforms, discusses support available for users at Brooklyn College, and gives links to training and tutorials freely available on the web.

An online course in geology taught using a mastery approach.

This book explains how it is even possible to reconstruct the history of the earth from data that is available in the present. Emphasis of the book is methodological and explains how it is known rather than what is known.

A lab exercise manual used in an Introduction to Geographic Information Systems class designed for undergraduates or graduate students. Material takes students though the fundamentals using ArcGIS v10.

An amazing tool from the U.S. Geological Survey. The viewer allows users to zoom in on any part of the United States and choose map layers such as elevation, roads, water, land use, and even detailed aerial satellite images. Whether you're examining a region, a state, or a few city blocks, this tool offers access to a wealth of topographic information.

Natural Resources Biometrics begins with a review of descriptive statistics, estimation, and hypothesis testing. The following chapters cover one- and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), including multiple comparison methods and interaction assessment, with a strong emphasis on application and interpretation. Simple and multiple linear regressions in a natural resource setting are covered in the next chapters, focusing on correlation, model fitting, residual analysis, and confidence and prediction intervals. The final chapters cover growth and yield models, volume and biomass equations, site index curves, competition indices, importance values, and measures of species diversity, association, and community similarity.

Open course sites from PSU in the fields of Energy and Mineral Engineering, Geography, Geosciences, Material Science, and Meteorology.

A comprehensive introductory text on the physical aspects of geology, including rocks and minerals, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciation, groundwater, streams, coasts, mass wasting, climate change, planetary geology and much more.

Provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment. USGS monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems.

Designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for a one-semester prealgebra course. The book’s organization makes it easy to adapt to a variety of course syllabi. The text introduces the fundamental concepts of algebra while addressing the needs of students with diverse backgrounds and learning styles.

Provides a comprehensive exploration of algebraic principles and meets scope and sequence requirements for a typical introductory algebra course. The modular approach and richness of content ensure that the book meets the needs of a variety of courses.

Adaptable and designed to fit the needs of a variety of precalculus courses. It is a comprehensive text that covers more ground than a typical one- or two-semester college-level precalculus course.

Designed for the typical two- or three-semester general calculus course, incorporating innovative features to enhance student learning. Volume 1 covers functions, limits, derivatives, and integration.

Volume 2 covers integration, differential equations, sequences and series, and parametric equations and polar coordinates.

Volume 3 covers parametric equations and polar coordinates, vectors, functions of several variables, multiple integration, and second-order differential equations.

Actively engages students in learning the subject through an activity-driven approach in which the vast majority of the examples are completed by students. Where many texts present a general theory of calculus followed by substantial collections of worked examples, we instead pose problems or situations, consider possibilities, and then ask students to investigate and explore.

An introductory textbook aimed at college-level sophomores and juniors. Typically students will have taken calculus, but it is not a prerequisite. The book begins with systems of linear equations, then covers matrix algebra, before taking up finite-dimensional vector spaces in full generality.

Follows scope and sequence requirements of a one-semester introduction to statistics course and is geared toward students majoring in fields other than math or engineering. The text assumes some knowledge of intermediate algebra and focuses on statistics application over theory.

An introduction to the nature of the universe. Use it to research or review our solar system, stars, galaxies, and the history of the universe. Each chapter has a set of corresponding homework questions.

An introductory book on astronomy.

Meets standard scope and sequence requirements for a two-semester introductory algebra-based physics course. The text is grounded in real-world examples to help students grasp fundamental physics concepts.

A calculus-based physics textbook meant for the type of freshman survey course taken by engineering and physical science majors, or for AP Physics C. It uses a nontraditional order of topics, with energy coming before force.

An entertaining and free e-book on physics – the science of motion. Comes in 6 volumes: 1) Fall, Flow and Heat; 2) relativity and Cosmology; 3) Light, Charges, and Brains; 4) the Quantum of Change; 5) Pleasure, Technology,and Stars; 6) The Strand Model-A Speculation on Unification.

This open access textbook was developed as an upper division undergraduate textbook for theories of personality. Its intended audience are students from Portland State University enrolled in Psychology 432 Personality course. The chapters are shorter than some personality textbooks and in this particular course Psy 432 the textbook is combined with other readings including scientific articles on personality. This open access textbook may be of interest to other courses interested in teaching about theory and research on personality.

Biological psychology is the study of the biological bases of behavior and mental processes. It explores how biological factors like genes, hormones, neurotransmitters, and brain structures influence psychological components like thoughts, emotions, memories, and actions. This free and open textbook provides a wide ranging and up-to-date introduction to the main topics and methods of biological psychology.

There is no better way to demonstrate the work and impact of community psychologists and allies than by showcasing actual projects conducted in partnership with communities. This textbook displays this work in a dynamic case study format that will ignite students' desire and passion to study and become future community psychologists or those whose heart beats with the beloved community. You can find community psychologists and allies partnering with communities to change racist policies, end health disparities, create alternate settings for youth, foster community-based models to heal trauma, evaluate programs, and much more!

Welcome to Child Growth and Development. This text is a presentation of how and why children grow, develop, and learn. We will look at how we change physically over time from conception through adolescence. We examine cognitive change, or how our ability to think and remember changes over the first 20 years or so of life. And we will look at how our emotions, psychological state, and social relationships change throughout childhood and adolescence.

This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units cover the traditional areas of intro-to-psychology; ranging from biological aspects of psychology to psychological disorders to social psychology. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs. Each module in this book is accompanied by instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentation, test items, adaptive student quiz, and reading anticipation guide.

This textbook provides a flexible approach to studying educational psychology, allowing chapters to be assigned sequentially or in customized orders to suit specific course needs. The first half focuses on foundational psychological principles, including learning theory, development, diversity, and motivation, while the latter half addresses practical teaching challenges like classroom management, communication, advanced thinking skills, instructional planning, and assessment. Additional resources include appendices on research methods and case studies to deepen understanding of educational research.

This text represents the collaboration of more than 70 authors from multiple countries. Essentials of Exercise and Sport Psychology: An Open Access Textbook brings this diverse set of experts together to provide a free, open, accessible textbook for students studying exercise and sport psychology. Primarily directed at undergraduate students, this well-referenced book is also appropriate for graduate students.

The book tackles the difficult topic of mental disorders in 15 modules and is updated through the DSM-5-TR. This journey starts by discussing what abnormal behavior is by attempting to understand what normal behavior is. Models of abnormal psychology and clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment are then discussed. With these three modules completed, the authors next explore several classes of mental disorders in 5 blocks. Block 1 covers mood, trauma and stressor related, and dissociative disorders. Block 2 covers anxiety, somatic symptom, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Block 3 covers eating and substance-related and addictive disorders. Block 4 tackles schizophrenia spectrum and personality disorders. Finally, Block 5 investigates neurocognitive disorders and then ends with a discussion of contemporary issues in psychopathology. Disorders are covered by discussing their clinical presentation and DSM Criteria, epidemiology, comorbidity, etiology, and treatment options.

The NOBA Project is a growing collection of expert-authored, open-licensed modules in psychology, funded by the Diener Education Fund. From these open modules, Tori Kearns and Deborah Lee created an arranged open textbook for her introductory psychology class. This textbook was created under a Round One ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

This open textbook is designed for Human Development, a core Psychology course. This course provides a bird’s eye view of major milestones and developmental tasks during each age period, starting at conception and ending with old age.

This textbook will show you how to comprehensively analyze, investigate, and address escalating problems of economic inequality, violence, substance abuse, homelessness, poverty, and racism. It will provide you with perspectives and tools to partner with community members and organizations to promote a fair and equitable allocation of resources and opportunities.

When you teach Introduction to Psychology, do you find it difficult — much harder than teaching classes in statistics or research methods? Do you easily give a lecture on the sympathetic nervous system, a lecture on Piaget, and a lecture on social cognition, but struggle with linking these topics together for the student? Do you feel like you are presenting a laundry list of research findings rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge? Have you wondered how to ensure your course is relevant to your students? Introduction to Psychology utilizes the dual theme of behavior and empiricism to make psychology relevant to intro students.

Comprehensive coverage of core concepts grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research, including coverage of the DSM-5 in discussions of psychological disorders. Incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.

This textbook represents the entire catalog of Noba topics. It contains 90 learning modules covering every area of psychology commonly taught in introductory courses.

Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences provides an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of statistics, and hypothesis testing as need for psychology students. The textbook introduces the fundamentals of statistics, an introduction to hypothesis testing, and t Tests. Related samples, independent samples, analysis of variance, correlations, linear regressions and chi-squares are all covered along with expanded appendices with z, t, F correlation, and a Chi-Square table. The text includes key terms and exercises with answers to odd-numbered exercises.

Lifespan Development aligns to the topics and objectives of most introductory developmental psychology courses taught across departments. Grounded in foundational theories and scientific research, the text teaches students about core aspects of human development—physical, cognitive, social, emotional—across the lifespan. A primary goal of the book is to incorporate content, scholarship, and activities that explore a variety of perspectives that encourage all students to feel seen and included.

Developmental Psychology, also known as Human Development or Lifespan Development, is the scientific study of ways in which people change, as well as stay the same, from conception to death. You will no doubt discover in the course of studying that the field examines change across a broad range of topics. These include physical and other psychophysiological processes, cognition, language, and psychosocial development, including the impact of family and peers.

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field's immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science.

This peer reviewed eBook introduces readers to foundational concepts in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, personality psychology and social psychology to help explain why conflict occurs, how it develops and how it may be managed and/or resolved.

Expertly compiled from Noba modules to fit the scope and sequence of common courses. Use them as-is or customize them to fit your needs. Instructor manual, PowerPoint presentations, and test bank available for many modules.

When you first think of personality, what comes to mind? When we refer to certain people as being “personalities,” we usually mean they are famous, people like movie stars or your favorite band. When we describe a person as having “lots of personality,” we usually mean they are outgoing and fun-loving, the kind of person we like to spend time with. But does this tell us anything about personality itself? Although we may think we have an understanding of what personality is, professional psychologists always seek to move beyond what people think they know in order to determine what is actually real or at least as close to real as we can come. In the pursuit of truly understanding personality, however, many personality theorists seem to have been focused on a particularly Western cultural approach that owes much of its history to the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud.

Have you ever had trouble teaching the various topics of social psychology and fitting them together to form a coherent field? Unnamed Author felt like he was presenting a laundry list of ideas, research studies, and phenomena, rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. He wondered how his students could be expected to remember and understand the many phenomena that social psychologists study? How could they tell what was most important? It was then that he realized a fresh approach to a Social Psychology textbook was needed to structure and integrate student learning; thus, Principles of Social Psychology was born. This textbook is based on a critical thinking approach, and its aim is to get students thinking actively and conceptually – with a greater focus on the forest than the trees. Yes, there are right and wrong answers, but the answers are not the only thing. What is perhaps even more important is how students get to the answers – the thinking process itself. To help students better grasp the big picture of social psychology, and to provide you with a theme that you can use to organize your lectures, Unnamed Author's text has a consistent pedagogy across the chapters. The presentation is organized around two underlying principles that are essential to social psychology:

Helping students organize their thinking about social psychology at a conceptual level.

Psychology 2e is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.

Designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders.

The first chapter provides an overview of the textbook and reviews the history of psychology and its methodology. Psychology is described as a science studying how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals. The remainder of the text will be organized in sections entitled “Mostly Nature” (Biological Psychology; Sensation & Perception; Motivation & Emotion), “Mostly Nurture” (Direct Learning; Indirect Learning (i.e., observational learning and language); Cognition), and “Nature/Nurture” (Human Development; Personality; Social Psychology; Maladaptive Behavior; Professional Psychology and Human Potential).

Provides standard introduction to psychology course content with a specific emphasis on biological aspects of psychology. This includes more content related to neuroscience methods, the brain and the nervous system.

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/psychology-as-a-biological-science

This fourth edition (published in 2019) was co-authored by Rajiv S. Jhangiani (Kwantlen Polytechnic University), Carrie Cuttler (Washington State University), and Dana C. Leighton (Texas A&M University—Texarkana) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory social psychology courses. The 8 units include 27 modules covering key social psych topics such as research methods, group processes, social influence, and relationships. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs. Each module in this book is accompanied by instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentation, test items, adaptive student quiz, and reading anticipation guide. Please note that the publisher requires you to login to access and download the textbooks

Brief video overview of the many different types of OER available in Psychology (including open textbooks).

Aheres to the scope and sequence of a typical, one-semester introductory sociology course. It offers comprehensive coverage of core concepts, foundational scholars, and emerging theories.

A realistic but motivating look at the many issues that are facing our society today. As this book’s subtitle, Continuity and Change, implies, social problems are persistent, but they have also improved in the past and can be improved in the present and future, provided that our nation has the wisdom and will to address them.

Sociology is the study of social groups, structures, processes, institutions, and events. This course will focus on understanding and applying the sociological perspective, which stresses the importance of the impact of social forces external to the individual in shaping people’s lives and experiences. This idea that we are all profoundly affected by the society in which we live is the guiding light of sociology. Sociologists also study the ways in which people, as they interact, shape their social systems. Topics studied will include socialization, social interaction, culture, groups, social structure, deviance, social inequality, social class, race, gender, institutions (political, economic, educational, family, and religious), collective behavior and social change. Students will be asked to learn the basic concepts, theories, and perspectives of sociology, to see how these operate in terms of social processes, structures, and events, and to apply this knowledge to better understand the social world.