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Query on Open Ed Resources

A reader wrote in:

I am not writing to become a contributor, but to offer a suggested topic that I (of course) hope would benefit me and others: experience using Open Educational Resources. 

There is a push at my institution to use and adopt them. It seems that the main development in this area is in science textbooks since they cost so much. But perhaps you could start a thread on experience with them in philosophy: what texts have people used/found and are they good?

This is a great query. I recently went to update my course text for Philosophy of Law, and found that the only recent textbook that meets my needs (in terms of offering the kind of content I am looking for) runs for $200(!). That's an absolutely exorbitant cost, one that seems unfair to visit upon students given all that they are already spending on higher ed. But I've sort of been at a loss when it comes to finding a more affordable book that offers anything remotely close to the material I care to teach.

So, Open Ed Resources sound like a great alternative. Yet they are not something I know much about. So it would be great to learn more. Do any of you have experience with Open Ed Resources? If so, what texts have you used/found to be good?

Posted in

6 responses to “Query on Open Ed Resources”

  1. Benedict Eastaugh

    There are a number of open logic textbooks, now mostly under the umbrella of the Open Logic Project.
    https://openlogicproject.org/
    These include the main Open Logic texbook itself, which is a set of different modules that can be remixed to make many different logic textbooks (it contains material on propositional and predicate logic, second-order logic, incompleteness, model theory, computability, modal logic, and more), all more or less at an advanced undergraduate level.
    There is also forall x, an introductory open logic textbook which has been used for a number of courses (in Calgary and Cambridge, amongst others).
    https://github.com/OpenLogicProject/forallx

    Reply
  2. E

    Hi Marcus. Is there a reason you assign a philosophy of law textbook rather than simply posting individuals articles for your students?

    Reply
  3. Marcus Arvan

    Hi E: There are several reasons. One is that my students find philosophy of law readings particularly tough, and they find chapter introductions (e.g. by textbook editors) helpful in figuring out the readings themselves. Another is that I require my students to bring daily readings to class, and I’ve found that they tend to simply forget to bring them when I assign standalone articles.
    If there were an Open Ed Reader in Philosophy of Law that had the coverage I’m looking for (I break my Phil Law course into three parts: the nature of law, what laws morally should be, and the philosophy of legal procedures), then that would be amazing. But, having searched around quite a bit, there only appear to be a few Phil Law textbooks organized in this fashion–and the only affordable one I’ve been able to find (Schauer & Sinnott-Armstrong) is several decades old now.

    Reply
  4. DS

    Hi all,
    I requested this thread and Marcus has helpfully obliged (Thanks Marcus). I will contribute what I have found:
    https://textbooks.opensuny.org/tag/philosophy/
    There’s a logic text and a ethics text. I am considering adopting the ethics text and supplementing it. The ethics text is editable, which is pretty nice. So I would edit it and have our print shop run off cheap copies for students to buy. There do appear to be a good number of OER logic textbooks. I have been hoping to find a good text for intro to phil. Like Marcus, I like for my students to have a physical textbook to class that contains most of the readings, as I like to do a good deal of close reading and textual analysis in class.
    I think this UMN collection is good also, but it doesn’t have what I am looking for in terms of an introductory reader. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/philosophy
    Maybe I need to make one!

    Reply
  5. Prabhpal Singh

    Hello.
    There are a couple of open access Intro texts available for download at https://www.ngefarpress.com/?m=1
    Have a look, and do share them with colleagues if you find them useful. Full disclosure, I am a contributor to the Intro to Ethics text.

    Reply
  6. Graham Leach-Krouse

    Also in the spirit of the open logic project: https://carnap.io contains a creative-commons logic textbook (intro level) with automatically graded interactive exercises. The site also lets you create interactive and automatically grade exercises using the formal systems of quite a few different logic textbooks, including the above mentioned forall x variants.
    (full disclosure: I’m the maintainer of that site)

    Reply

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