Open Educational Resources (OER): College Success/Life Skills

A Different Road To College: A Guide For Transitioning Non-Traditional Students is designed to introduce students to the contextual issues of college. Non-traditional students have an ever-growing presence on college campuses, especially community colleges. This open educational resource is designed to engage students in seeing themselves as college students and understanding the complexity of what that means to their lives.

How 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 combined 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.

From the University of Saskatchewan "Our primary goal in writing University Success is to help you succeed in university. This is a how-to manual for your first year of study."

“This material is for low beginning/literacy ESL students who need life skill instruction. There is a teacher's manual, student book, blackline masters and audio for every lesson. This material was developed through the California Department of Education grant.”

Openly licensed textbook
July 2018, Portland State University
Three major sections: Description, Narration, and Reflection; Text Wrestling; and Research and Argumentation
Designed for first- and second-year college composition courses
Strong emphasis on vocabulary, concepts, and strategies, as well as student writing to exemplify those writing strategies.
Online version available, as well as downloadable PDF versions of the entire text + individual chapters
CC BY NC license (Creative Commons - Attribution - NonCommercial)
Sample attribution statement: “EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers” by Shane Abrams, Portland State University, is licensed under CC BY NC 4.0

Openly licensed textbook- 2017
Organized into two main sections: Part I, Working with Texts and Part II, Writing
Created by community college instructors in Oregon, uses a reading apprenticeship-style approach to teaching reading and writing
PDF and online versions available from this page
CC BY NC license (Creative Commons - Attribution - NonCommercial)
Sample attribution statement: “The Word on College Reading and Writing” by Monique Babin, Carol Burnell, and Susan Pesznecker is licensed under CC BY NC

Openly licensed textbook
“A text that provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition.”
Includes a chapter on “Help for English Language Learners”
Available in multiple formats: web page, e-pub, PDF, MOBI, and WXR.
CC BY NC SA license (Creative Commons - Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike)
Sample attribution statement: “Writing for Success” by University of Minnesota is licensed under CC BY NC SA 4.0

Openly licensed textbook
Revised 2016 edition of textbook created by community college instructor in Oregon
Clearly written beginning writing book includes the basics of composition, grammar, citing, and research and broken down into easy-to-tackle sections
Includes a “Multilingual Writers and ESL Challenges” section
Available formats include web, e-pub, PDF, and MOBI -- can also link to specific chapters
CC BY 4.0 license (Creative Commons - Attribution)
Sample attribution statement: “About Writing” by Robin Jeffrey is licensed under CC BY4.0

Openly licensed course
Lumen Learning online course
Covers grammar, punctuation, usage, sentence structure, the writing process, research, and modules on APA and MLA style
Available as web page or PDF download
Generally CC BY license (Creative Commons - Attribution), but each page has specific license and attribution info at the bottom
Sample attribution statement: “Why Is Grammar Important,” Guide to Writing by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0