scholarly journals Book Review: Affordable Course Materials: Electronic Textbooks and Open Educational Resources

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Emma Molls

Editor Chris Diaz opens this book with a boundary-pushing question: “What if I just bought all the textbooks?” The case studies that follow begin with other daring questions, all searching for an answer to the question of how to reduce student costs through affordable course materials. The nine case studies in the book represent universities from across the United States and a global campus (New York University at Shanghai). Each case study presents a different approach to providing affordable course materials, based on the campus context and student needs.

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Julie Gaida

The nine case studies collected in Affordable Course Materials cite research that points to the same truth students across the country face with each new academic term: the price of textbooks far outpaces the rate of inflation. According to an oft-cited report released by the Government Accountability Office in 2013, the price of the average new textbook rose 82 percent in the preceding decade—three times the rate of inflation.1 These case studies assert the claim that libraries, already both a central part of the campus community and committed to equal access to information resources, are perfectly poised to mitigate the cost of core texts. By facilitating access to course materials in innovative ways, libraries can alleviate the financial burden on the students they serve. This volume showcases approaches taken by academic libraries to benefit their campus communities, the challenges the authors faced, and the lessons learned. It serves as a valuable source of information and inspiration for those wishing to implement their own initiatives.


2019 ◽  
pp. 123-130

The scientific research works concerning the field of mechanical engineering such as, manufacturing machine slate, soil tillage, sowing and harvesting based on the requirements for the implementation of agrotechnical measures for the cultivation of plants in its transportation, through the development of mastering new types of high-performance and energy-saving machines in manufacturing machine slate, creation of multifunctional machines, allowing simultaneous soil cultivation, by means of several planting operations, integration of agricultural machine designs are taken into account in manufacturing of the local universal tractor designed basing on high ergonomic indicators. For this reason, this article explores the use of case studies in teaching agricultural terminology by means analyzing the researches in machine building. Case study method was firstly used in 1870 in Harvard University of Law School in the United States. Also in the article, we give the examples of agricultural machine-building terms, teaching terminology and case methods, case study process and case studies method itself. The research works in the field of mechanical engineering and the use of case studies in teaching terminology have also been analyzed. In addition, the requirements for the development of case study tasks are given in their practical didactic nature. We also give case study models that allow us analyzing and evaluating students' activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-127
Author(s):  
Lucy D. Curzon

BOOK REVIEWAnn Travers. 2018. The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution. New York: New York University Press.Ann Travers’s new book, The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution (hereafter The Trans Generation) is a highly persuasive investigation that sheds much-needed scholarly light on a grossly marginalized, precarious community. Travers interviewed 36 transgender children, and many of their parents, to reveal the challenges they face in everyday use of bathrooms, locker rooms, and other rigidly gendered spaces, as well as in interactions with friends, parents, and siblings, as well as schools, and local and state or provincial governments. Apart from the scope of this study, what is remarkable about The Trans Generation is its accessibility. Instead of presenting a quantitative analysis, which can be alienating to readers outside academia, Travers offers an exhaustive qualitative study parsed in highly thoughtful, eloquent, and open terms—one that prizes the individuality, indeed the knowableness, of each child interviewed. And, although The Trans Generation is not explicitly dedicated to discussions of girlhood, the focus of this journal, it nonetheless offers, I argue, valuable new paradigms or strategies for thinking about girls’ lives and identities.


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