Catalog

Contributors to this open textbook offer relatable descriptions, details, and contexts of artworks from around the world, which have often been relegated to the peripheries of art and social history. Art traditions from Africa, Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, Islamicate regions, East Asia, and the indigenous Americas (before colonization) are prioritized to challenge the long-held view that “real art” only comes from the West. Introductory discussions of the history of art history and geographic conventions set the stage for considering the larger question, “where does art come from,” and other questions such as, “why haven’t I heard much about art from Africa, Oceania, etc.?” This book takes a pluralistic approach, forefronting diversity and interconnectedness. Scholars and students collaborated to produce this book. Student contributions will continue to improve the text and interactivity as it evolves. A scavenger hunt of student-made “easter eggs” builds a thread of engagement and humor throughout the book. Make sure to find them all! 

Public Service Ethics offers readers an approachable introduction to a field that can often feel abstract or overly technical. The book invites students to see ethics not as a distant philosophical exercise or as a list of conduct violations, but as a deeper framework that shapes and is shaped by our public ideals, our public institutions and our public employees.

The book is designed to give students and professors a shared foundation for meaningful conversations about public service ethics. Rather than presenting ethics as a rigid set of rules, this book uses ethics as a lens to help readers understand how public institutions function, how decisions are made, and how values shape outcomes. Each chapter introduces a core topic in public administration, from service delivery to intergovernmental relations to public accountability, and then explores the ethical considerations of each topic. This structure makes the book flexible enough for classroom use while still offering a cohesive narrative that students can follow from beginning to end.

Ultimately, the goal of this book is to demystify the field and empower readers to think critically about public service ethics. By blending practical examples, accessible explanations, and a deep respect for the people who dedicate their careers to public work, the book becomes more than a textbook. It is an invitation to enter the field with curiosity, to ask better questions, and to see public service as both a responsibility and a profoundly powerful endeavor.

This book offers an accessible and critical look at the historical geography of North America. Placing an emphasis on the continent's various human geographies, the book discusses how they developed and interacted across North America’s various physiographic regions. Highlighting spatial entanglements of culture, ethnicity, and religion, the book addresses the development of technology within the context of the historical extraction and consumption of the continent’s natural resources. Engaging a time span that reaches back to the Pre-Columbian Era, and up to the early decades of the twenty-first century, the book provides a broad survey of North America's historical geography.

If you need an accessibility accommodation or have questions about the use of this text, please contact Mavs Open Press Staff.

Basic engineering knowledge about fluid mechanics is required in various sectors of water resources engineering, such as designing hydraulic structure on any riverine environments and flood mitigation process. The objective of this book is to enable students to understand fundamental concepts in the field of fluid mechanics and apply those concepts in practice. Applied Fluid Mechanics Lab Manual is designed to enhance civil engineering students’ understanding and knowledge of experimental methods and basic principles of fluid mechanics. The ten experiments in this lab manual provide an overview of widely used terms and phenomena of fluid mechanics and open channel flow, which are required for solving engineering problems.

A guide to the historical profession appropriate for use in an undergraduate Historical Methods course. The goal for this book is that those who read it will learn how to do well in history courses by developing the ability to read, research, and write according to the standards established in our discipline. Becoming familiar with how historians customarily approach questions about the past–as well as learning to how to read critically, research efficiently, build strong arguments based on evidence, and write with clarity–are the lessons that will give history students not only a leg-up in their history courses, but provide important, marketable skills useful in other courses and in many careers (some of which are highlighted within the text). The main lesson gained from reading this book is that within the professional discipline of history there are standards for research and writing about the past.

The process of designing online courses often focuses on the methodology of taking certain steps to produce a product (the course). We feel that learning should be an experience more than a place run by a person constrained by specific designs. The goal of this book is to provide an updated look at many of the issues that comprise the online learning experience creation process. As online learning evolves, the lines and distinctions between the various classifications of courses has blurred and often vanished. Learning contexts run the gamut from small to massive, and from closed courses to boundary-less experiences. But how do we create something within this incredibly wide range? Classic elements of instructional design remain relevant at the same time that newer concepts of learning experience are growing in importance. However, problematic issues new and old still have to be addressed. This book aims to be a handbook that explores as many of these issues and concepts as possible for new and experienced designers alike, whether you are creating traditional online courses, open learning experiences, or anything in between. We also desire this book to be an ongoing process. Many issues and contexts were covered, many were not covered in enough depth, and many others were not covered at all. Our desire is that this book will begin a conversation that will add to future editions as more people join the writing team.

This is a lab manual for a college-level human anatomy course. Mastery of anatomy requires a fair amount of memorization and recall skills. The activities in this manual encourage students to engage with new vocabulary in many ways, including grouping key terms, matching terms to structures, recalling definitions, and written exercises. Most of the activities in this manual utilize anatomical models, and several dissections of animal tissues and histological examinations are also included. Each unit includes both pre- and post-lab questions and six lab exercises designed for a classroom where students move from station to station. The vocabulary terms used in each unit are listed at the end of the manual and serve as a checklist for practicals.

To access the PDF version of this book in our Mavs Open Press OER Archive on MavMatrix, please click on the following link: Human Anatomy Lab Manual

If you need an accessibility accommodation or have questions about the use of this text, please contact Mavs Open Press Staff.

As an introductory textbook for social work students studying research methods, this book guides students through the process of writing a literature review and determining research questions for a research project. Students will learn how to discover a researchable topic that is interesting to them, examine scholarly literature, and write a literature review. The guidebook is aligned with the Council on Social Work Education’s 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Students and faculty can download copies of this guidebook using the links provided in the front matter. As an open textbook, users are free to retain copies, redistribute copies (non-commercially), revise the contents, remix it with other works, and reuse for any purpose.

This project aims to provide a complete guide for the CE/AREN 3143 course (Properties and Behavior of Soil). Students will be benefitted from this online lab manual.

To access the PDF version of this book in our Mavs Open Press OER Archive on MavMatrix, please click on the following link: Properties and Behavior of Soil – Online Lab Manual

If you need an accessibility accommodation or have questions about the use of this text, please contact Mavs Open Press Staff.

In Keepin’ Up with Popular Culture, Dr. David Arditi introduces students to popular culture as a way to view and understand society, politics, and culture. This book demonstrates to students the overall importance of popular culture in their lives. It explores the ways that language is used (and the way that we use language) to construct the world around us through popular culture.

To access the PDF version of this book in our Mavs Open Press OER Archive on MavMatrix, please click on the following link: Keepin' Up with Popular Culture

If you need an accessibility accommodation or have questions about the use of this text, please contact Mavs Open Press Staff.