Catalogue

The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) is for anyone thinking about starting an open textbook project. It starts at the beginning of the process, with chapters on project scoping and building a team, and then moves on to content creation and editing, getting feedback and reviews, coordinating release and adoptions, and sustaining the book’s community.

The book is also a work-in-progress, an effort that will evolve and grow over time. Through conversations, use, new writers’ and editors’ contributions, and ongoing reflection and revision, it will reflect our changing perspectives on how and why we make open textbooks. Initiated by Rebus team members Zoe Wake Hyde and Apurva Ashok, the text is the result of innumerable conversations and exchanges within the Rebus Community, representing a wide range of collective knowledge and experience.

Please note those two little words in parentheses in the title: there are plenty of new learnings, knowledge, and reflexive revisions to come! Everyone is therefore invited to become a part of the project and follow its progress, as well as leave feedback, comments, and recommendations for corrections on the Rebus Community platform.

Blueprint for Success in College: Indispensable Study Skills and Time Management Strategies is a remix of four previously existing OER (Open Educational Resources): A Different Road To College: A Guide For Transitioning To College For Non-traditional Students by Alise Lamoreaux, How to Learn Like a Pro! by Phyllis Nissila, Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom, edited by Thomas Priester, College Success, provided by Lumen Learning, and one previously copyrighted textbook with content that is now openly licensed: Blueprint for Success in College: Indispensable Study Skills and Time Management Strategies by Dave Dillon (Montezuma Publishing, first edition). A free OER, (Open Educational Resource), Blueprint for Success in College: Indispensable Study Skills and Time Management Strategies is a students’ guide for classroom success and efficient use of time. This text, designed to show how to be successful in college  focuses on study skills, time management.

Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context.

The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools:

• Chapter learning outcomes
• Key terms
• Images of philosophers and related art
• Useful diagrams and tables
• Boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material
• Questions for reflection
• Suggestions for further reading
• A glossary

For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy series.

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. Please email us at openaccesscptextbook@gmail.com with any feedback or to request downloadable versions of the chapter lecture slides and quizzes for instructor use.

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!

We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others’ behavior and choices.

This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition. It considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment: Is there such a thing as something that is really right or really wrong independent of time, place and perspective? What is the relationship between religion and ethics? How can we reconcile self-interest and ethics? Is it ever acceptable to harm one person in order to help others? What do recent discussions in evolutionary biology or have to say about human moral systems? What is the relation between gender and ethics? The authors invite you to participate in their exploration of these and many other questions in philosophical ethics.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series.

Sight-Reading for Guitar: The Keep Going Method Book and Video Series teaches guitar players from all musical backgrounds to understand, read and play modern staff notation in real time. The Keep Going Method is designed to impart the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for sight-reading with efficiency, fun and encouragement. The skill of sight-reading is a difficult to develop, primarily because it is traditionally taught inefficiently. Further, students encounter high levels of emotional discomfort in the beginning stages of skill acquisition. The method in this book is designed to impart the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for sight-reading with efficiency, clarity and encouragement. All types of guitars apply: electric, steel-string and nylon-string.

Each unit contains brief descriptions of musical symbols, play-along duet exercises and compositions, encouragement and methods for self-assessment. The series contains 20 units that start at the beginner level and progress to the intermediate/advanced level. At the completion of the series guitarists will be able to sight-read most rhythms, pitches and other notations relevant to guitar notation. The series also features 30 original duet compositions, of varying styles, created exclusively for this series!

Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.

This collection is co-created thanks to contributions from the Americas, Japan and China, Australia and Austria, England and France, Italy, Germany and Ethiopia. It is not surprising, therefore, that all eleven chapters adopt active critical and often multicultural perspectives, so as to evaluate aesthetics in relation to the tradition, its cultural potential, and the messy, geopolitical circumstances of the 21st century.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series.

Where did the universe come from? Is life a result of chance, or design? If God is loving and all-powerful, why does evil still exist? Is religious belief just a byproduct of undirected evolutionary processes? Or did God make sure humans would evolve in such a way as to believe? Are philosophers closed-minded about religion? And why is so much of philosophy of religion about God—but not about gods?

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces students to some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God. It also includes discussions of some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the deep interconnections between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter considers what place there is for non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.

Whatever your religious beliefs—or lack of beliefs—we think you will find many of the arguments in this book fascinating to think about, and useful starting points for deeper philosophical discussions.

Introduction to Philosophy: Logic provides students with the concepts and skills necessary to identify and evaluate arguments effectively. The chapters, all written by experts in the field, provide an overview of what arguments are, the different types of arguments one can expect to encounter in both philosophy and everyday life, and how to recognise common argumentative mistakes. The book aims to reach not only those who wish to learn logic to further their philosophical education, but also those who wish to gain the tools to better understand how to approach arguments in many aspects of their lives.