Open Educational Resources (OER)

This text aligns with the goals, topics, and objectives of many first-year writing and composition courses. It is organized according to relevant genres, and focuses on the writing process, effective writing practices or strategies—including graphic organizers, writing frames, and word banks to support visual learning—and conventions of usage and style. The text includes an editing and documentation handbook, which provides information on grammar and mechanics, common usage errors, and citation styles.

Students learn the various writing styles appropriate for analyzing, addressing, and critiquing these genres including poetry, novels, dramas, and research writing. The text and its pairing of helpful visual aids throughout emphasizes the importance of critical reading and analysis in producing a successful composition.

Dr. Tanya Bennett and ten colleagues from the University of North Georgia have written Contribute a Verse: A Guide to First Year Composition. This peer reviewed textbook, published by the University of North Georgia Press, combines a composition rhetoric manual with grammar and documentation instruction and resources, components that can be flexibly arranged to fit instructors’ classroom plans.

Writing 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.

This collection of readings that emerged out of partnerships between OER enthusiasts, composition instructors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and contributors who shared ideas and resources on a Twitter thread about open composition.

This text is organized around five key essays, selected to coordinate with the essay styles commonly taught in first-year/first-semester composition courses. There are 2 expository, 1 narrative, and 2 argument essays. Each module includes one essay, with accompanying activities and supporting materials.

This book is about analyzing others' arguments and crafting your own. The rhetorical choices that you make as a writer–from evidence to structure to tone–impact how your audience will receive your ideas. Using those tools effectively will help your voice be heard.

The authors decided that they wanted their new text to function more like a manual or guide to rhetorical concepts and writing genres, to composing in a college setting, and to helping students succeed in first year writing.

This text was designed not only to teach students about composition and rhetoric, but about research skills, too. The editors of this text maintain that research skills have rhetorical elements.

Critical Thinking in Academic Research - 2nd Edition provides examples and easy-to-understand explanations to equip students with the skills to develop research questions, evaluate and choose the right sources, search for information, and understand arguments.

This book offers a wealth of instructional material on the topic of research article writing for publication and thesis or dissertation completion. The text provides graduate student writers with helpful information, strategies, and tips on navigating disciplinary writing in their fields and how to understand, dissect, and ultimately, construct their own research article.

A short course for graduate students to increase their proficiency in conducting research for literature and systematic reviews. After taking the mini course graduate students will understand how to conduct their review, how to execute appropriate searches, manage their results and demonstrate strategic reading skills.

The editors of Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom bring together stories, theories, and research that can further inform the ways in which we situate and address intellectual property issues in our writing classrooms.

From the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, this open textbook addresses business communication which is concise, direct, clear, and compelling.

This textbook focuses on developing both technical and professional communication skills and will help readers practice strategies for critically analyzing audiences and contexts, real-world applications of rhetorical principles, and skills for producing documents, presentations, videos, and wide variety of other professional communications.

Open TC is a freely accessible online textbook for technical communication, technical writing, workplace writing, and other related courses. Currently in its third rendition, the authors chose to develop an Open Educational Resource that would "allow us to move away from a well-respected but very expensive textbook and towards something equally as valuable but more affordable for students."

Good writing skills are important in today’s competitive work environment. This is especially the case for communication-related professions such as public relations, brand communication, journalism, and marketing. Writing for Strategic Communication Industries emphasizes practical application of academic inquiry to help readers improve their writing skills.

Design Discourse addresses the complexities of developing professional and technical writing programs. The essays in the collection offer reflections on efforts to bridge two cultures — what the editors characterize as the "art and science of writing" — by addressing the tensions between them.

This open textbook is designed to introduce readers to the basics of technical communication: audience and task analysis in workplace contexts, clear and concise communications style, effective document design, teamwork and collaboration, and fundamental research skills.

This handbook will teach you how to create everything from manuals to work instructions. We’ll help you avoid the most common pitfalls of tech writing, from poor planning to outdated publishing.