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- AIS 1203: College Success: Open Educational Resources and Library E-books & Streaming Media
AIS 1203: College Success: Open Educational Resources and Library E-books & Streaming Media
Open Textbooks and Online Courses: College Success
Instructor Tips:
- For open educational resources, you may copy and paste links to individual chapters from the URL address bar of your browser to your Canvas course.
- For library e-books and streaming media, make sure to use specially formatted persistent links (permalinks, stable links, etc.) which include a proxy server prefix (see below for more information).
College Success by ISBN: 1936126567Publication Date: 2010Each chapter asks you to evaluate yourself because success starts with recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, your hopes and desires, and your own personal, individual realities. You’ll develop your own goals based on these self-assessments, determining what success in college really means for you as an individual. Throughout the book, you will find numerous interactive activities created to help you improve your skills. To assist you with this, the material is presented in easily digestible “chunks” of information so you can begin applying it immediately in your own life—and get the most out of your college education.
A Different Road to College: A Guide for Transitioning to College for Non-Traditional Students by Publication Date: 2016Most textbooks available on the topic of college transition/success today focus on the traditional 18-year old student, and the needs of someone living away from home for the first time. The desire to create this textbook comes from years of experience helping GED and other “non-traditional” students transition to community college and beyond.
Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom by 
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ISBN: 9781942341109Publication Date: 2015Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom (FAS: WoW) introduces you to the various aspects of student and academic life on campus and prepares you to thrive as a successful college student (since there is a difference between a college student and a successful college student). Each section of FAS: WoW is framed by self-authored, true-to-life short stories from actual State University of New York (SUNY) students, employees, and alumni. The advice they share includes a variety of techniques to help you cope with the demands of college. The lessons learned are meant to enlarge your awareness of self with respect to your academic and personal goals and assist you to gain the necessary skills to succeed in college.
How to Learn Like a Pro! by Publication Date: 2016How to Learn Like a Pro! features the “big six” effective learning/study skills topics: learning styles and preferences, time and materials management, critical thinking and reading, note-taking, memory principles, and test-taking techniques. Each of the six units featuring a total of twenty-three lessons and accompanying exercises (with a dash of humor here and there) were developed with the diverse student body of the community college in mind as well as learners in other educational venues.
Six Steps to Job Search Success by ISBN: 9781453317259Publication Date: 2011This book is a practical discussion of six actionable steps that students can take to land a job regardless of the market. Whether the estimate is 25% unemployment or single-digit unemployment, that number doesn’t apply to any one student. For any individual, the unemployment rate is 0% or 100%. One either has a job or doesn't. When any one person is looking for a job and there is 10% unemployment, that person just wants to be one of the nine people that has a job.
Writing in College by ISBN: 9781942341215Publication Date: 2016-01-15Writing in College is designed for students who have largely mastered high-school level conventions of formal academic writing and are now moving beyond the five-paragraph essay to more advanced engagement with text. It is well suited to composition courses or first-year seminars, and valuable as a supplemental or recommended text in other writing-intensive classes. It provides a friendly, down-to-earth introduction to professors' goals and expectations, demystifying the norms of the academy and how they shape college writing assignments. Each of the nine chapters could be read separately, and each includes suggested exercises to bring the main messages to life.Students will find in Writing in College a warm invitation to join the academic community as novice scholars and to approach writing as a meaningful medium of communication. With concise discussions, clear multidisciplinary examples, and empathy for the challenges of student life, Guptill conveys a welcoming tone. In addition, each chapter includes Student Voices: peer-to-peer wisdom from real SUNY Brockport students about their strategies for and experiences with college writing. While there are many affordable writing guides available, most focus only on sentence-level issues or, conversely, a broad introduction to making the transition. Writing In College, in contrast, provides both a coherent frame for approaching writing assignments and indispensable advice for effective organization and expression.
Writing for Success by ISBN: 9781453310717Publication Date: 2015Provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition.
Beginning with the sentence and its essential elements, this book addresses each concept with clear, concise and effective examples that are immediately reinforced with exercises and opportunities to demonstrate, and reinforce, learning.
- College Success LumenProvides resources for first-year college students on the path to academic and life success. Time management, effective methods of communication, career exploration, and practical tools for academic achievement are a few of the topic areas covered.
- Try College 101 SaylorDesigned to equip you with the basic academic, professional, and personal skills you will need to be successful in college. You are probably already familiar with some of the skills and topics covered; others will be brand new ideas.
Using OER and Library Resources: Tips for Instructors
By using OER (open educational resources) and online library resources, you can design a high-quality, low-cost learning experience for your students.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Available to students after the semester ends
- Free to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute
Library Resources (e-books, articles, and streaming video)
- Available at no additional cost to UTSA students
- Can be linked from Canvas for off-campus access.
Tips about E-books
The UTSA Libraries subscribes to several e-book databases with different access models. If you choose a library e-book for your course, contact your librarian at least two weeks in advance so we can confirm:
- Info on e-book ownership and access. Some of our e-books are on demand and not owned by the library, so they may disappear without warning. If an e-book is not already owned, we can explore other access options.
- Info on multiple-user access for the e-book.
- A link that works off campus for your Canvas course.
In most cases, commercial textbooks are not available for purchase by libraries for online use.
Off-Campus Access
To ensure off-campus access to library e-books, articles and streaming video, you need to use a persistent link (which may also be called a permalink, stable link, record URL, etc) with a proxy server prefix https://login.libweb.lib.utsa.edu/login?URL=
While some library databases automatically add the proxy prefix, it sometimes needs to be added manually. Contact your librarian for help.
Benefits: OER and Teaching
While it's tempting to use commercial textbooks and teaching tools, there are many open access resources on college success topics that provide the same or better course outcomes.
These OER also:
- Increase student engagement
- Decrease D/F/W rates
- Deliver more comprehensive topic coverage by leveraging diverse perspectives of scholars and experts
- Provide immediate and mobile access to required readings
- Increase access to course content for print disabled
- Save your students money
Read more about OER and UTSA Libraries' OER effort here.