Category Archives: New Resources

Open Educational Resources Directory for Courses at UVic

The book cover of the OER by Discipline Directory is made up of an exterior image of McPherson library, with the title below it and the University of Victoria Libraries logo underneath that.

ePublishing Services, UVic Libraries is pleased to announce the release of our OER by Discipline Directory. This reference book, which will be updated as new resources are identified, lists a wide range of Open Educational Resources (OER) that may be adopted for courses at UVic. It acts as a referratory where the name of a resource, a link to where it can be accessed, its license, and then a short description of it are provided. 

Our Directory is adapted from the BCcampus Open Education OER by Discipline Directory, which was edited by Lauri M. Aesoph and Josie Gray and uses a CC BY 4.0 license. We are grateful to the editors for all their hard work in putting this resource together, and for allowing others to share and adapt their material. 

The OER by Discipline Directory project complements the Libraries’ advocacy efforts and aligns with its Strategic Directions. By identifying and using OER in their classrooms, UVic instructors can assign quality course materials while providing cost-free solutions for students. These savings improve students’ access to affordable, quality education, and are closely aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals #4. 

New Title: Learning from our Past

Learning from our Past is a new release published by the University of Victoria Libraries ePublishing Services. It can be downloaded for free on UVicSpace

 


cover for Learning from our Past textbook

This middle school learning resource focuses on the history of livelihoods and lifeways in the Banda District of Ghana, West Africa. Today a rural district in west central Ghana, Banda has long been a crossroads of trade and a place where people from different backgrounds settled and formed communities. The fascinating history of how Banda area people interacted with neighbouring communities, responded to changing climate, and drew on local knowledge and resources to sustain their families comes from studying archaeology, oral histories and textual sources. Among the topics covered in this open-access resource are trade and the effects of global connections on rural life; the science and innovation behind local industries like potting and metallurgy; the role of weaving as a technology that transformed local materials into valued goods; and the range of ways in which people provided for their families through farming, fishing and hunting. The resource combines background information with suggested hands-on activities that support learning. The resource is available in English and in Nafaanra, which is one of several languages spoken in the Banda District.


Authors

Allison Balabuch is a PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. She earned her degrees from the University of British Columbia – a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Political Science and a Bachelor of Education – and the University of Victoria – a Master of Arts in Curriculum and Instruction. She has been a French Immersion teacher for 25 years in British Columbia and England. Her teaching and research are centered on project-based learning, arts-based learning, land-based learning, and interdisciplinary studies in the classroom. Her current research is focused on community-based and interdisciplinary collaboration with the goal of improving and decolonizing educational systems and pedagogy.

Dr. Esther Attiogbe is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Professional Studies Accra. She holds a PhD in Adult Education and Human Resource Studies from the University of Ghana. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Administration and Master of Philosophy in Administration from the University of Ghana. Esther did her Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the University of Ghana in collaboration with the University of Victoria, Canada. She teaches at both graduate and undergraduate levels. Her research interests are in the areas of higher education management, adult learning and human resource management. Her teaching philosophy is underpinned by the concept of gameful learning where learners and instructors collaborate and interact to make the learning environment interesting, engaging and personalized. With a passion for educating the youth, she is involved in youth programmes in her community. She is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Human Resource Management, Ghana.

Dr. Ann Stahl is a Professor in the University of Victoria’s Department of Anthropology who earned her M.A. in Archaeology from the University of Calgary (1978) and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (1985). She is an anthropological archaeologist whose long-term research has focused on how daily life in rural West Africa has been reshaped over centuries by involvement in global exchange networks. Funded by a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant (“Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past,” 2018-2022), a recent project involved collaborations with partners in Ghana and the University of Victoria Libraries to develop sustainable and accessible digital heritage resources that help communities to sustain place-based relationships and foster knowledge revitalization (Banda Through Time). Her most recent work, supported by an SSHRC Connection grant, has involved collaborations with educators to enhance the role of heritage-based knowledge in classroom learning. She has held faculty positions at Binghamton University in New York (1988-2008) and University College London’s Institute of Archaeology (1985-1988) and her work has been funded over the years by the British Academy, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Geographic Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Programme. She is editor of a key text on African archaeology (African Archaeology. A Critical Introduction, 2005, Blackwell), co-editor with Andrew P. Roddick of a multidisciplinary collection, Knowledge in Motion. Constellations of Learning across Time and Place (2016, University of Arizona) and author of Making History in Banda. Anthropological Visions of Africa’s Past (2001, Cambridge University Press). Her most recent book, Archaeology. Why It Matters was published by Polity Press (2023). She is the 2020 recipient of the University of Victoria’s REACH Award for Excellence in Knowledge Mobilization and a Faculty of Social Sciences Lansdowne Distinguished Fellow (2020-2023).

Translator – English to Nafaanra

Mr. Sampson Attah is a resident of Banda-Ahenkro, Banda District, Bono Region, Ghana. He is a member of the community-based Banda Heritage Initiative and a long-time contributor to work of the Banda Research Project (1986-2011), which studied the archaeology and history of Banda’s global connections. From the mid 1980s to the early 2000s, Mr. Attah worked as a Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT) translator and he is a strong promoter of indigenous language literacy and revitalization of Nafaanra, which is among Ghana’s at-risk minority languages.

New Title: “Tell Them Not to Hate”

“Tell Them Not to Hate”: Words of Witness and Sacred Imperatives by Rabbi Victor Hillel Reinstein, and edited by Richard Kool is a new release published by the University of Victoria Libraries ePublishing Services. It can be downloaded for free on UVicSpace: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/13021


From the Editor, Dr. Richard Kool: For those of us growing up in families profoundly touched by the Holocaust, there seemed to be two situations: either our parents rarely said anything about their experiences, or they often or always spoke of their experiences. In the former situation, we knew something was wrong: grandparents, uncles, and cousins were missing from our lives and we didn’t know why. They weren’t spoken of: we didn’t know what had happened, and knew we weren’t supposed to know. Or, we knew about those grandparents, aunts, cousins: we knew about them and we knew exactly what happened to them; we knew about their murders at the hands of the Nazis and other European anti-Semites. My family’s secrets were hidden until 1994, when, at the Victoria Yom Ha’shoah service, I realized I needed to understand what happened to my mother. Rabbi Reinstein’s influence at that time was an important part of my journey to uncovering her history as a Dutch teenager in hiding. Hearing Victor’s talk in Victoria in January 2020, I realized I still owed a large debt to him. This elaboration of his presentation, featuring images of the people he spoke about, is an offering of gratitude to him for all the gifts he’s given me and my entire family. About this project: Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross,, Department of History, University of Victoria Rabbi Victor Reinstein visited Victoria in 2020 as a guest of the Defying Hatred Project at the University of Victoria. The project collaborated with Congregation Emanu-El to explore the local Jewish community’s responses to acts of hate and expressions of anti-Semitism and racism. Led by myself and fellow-historian Lynne Marks, political scientist Matt James, Germanic and Slavic Studies professor Helga Thorson, and Victoria Shoah Project member Frances Grunberg, the project was dedicated to critically examining the history and current possibilities of defying hatred in Victoria. When I met Rabbi Reinstein in Boston in the summer of 2019, I discovered (as many had before me) the warmth and depth of his reflections on these topics. This story, I felt, had to be told back home, in Victoria. Funds from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada made the visit possible.


Author

Rabbi Reinstein was born near Boston, MA, in 1950. He was the rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria, BC Canada from 1982 to1998. He then returned to the Boston area and, along with his wife Mieke, founded the Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue in Jamaica Plain, MA. Drawing from Torah and Jewish life, the “vision and the way,” he seeks at the core of his work to help fulfill God’s hope for a world of justice and peace. As founding rabbi, he stepped down from his role as the active rabbi of Nehar Shalom in June, 2020.

 

New Title: Toward a Moral Horizon

Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice edited by Rosalie Starzomski, Janet L. Storch, and Patricia Rodney is a new release published by the University of Victoria Libraries ePublishing Services. It can be downloaded for free on UVicSpace: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/13021


This third edition of Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice will assist nurses and all health care providers to take up the challenge of embedding ethics in health care practice, education, research, and policy at all levels—from local to regional to global. In the current, complex health care environment, more nurses are engaging in graduate studies to enhance their knowledge and expertise in providing necessary leadership in all health care settings. As a result, there is a growing need for an advanced nursing ethics text, and so this book is targeted towards graduate-level and upper-level undergraduate nursing students, as well as nurses in leadership roles—providing a much-needed resource for these groups.

This edition was written during a period when the COVID‑19 pandemic caused a health care crisis in Canada and around the world, provoking what the authors of one of the chapters called “a clarion call for change” in health care provision. The pandemic brought the fault lines of the Canadian health care system to the forefront of awareness, and profoundly affected patients, families, communities, as well as nurses and other health care providers. In addition to the influence of the pandemic, society is in the midst of rapid growth in science and technology. Now, more than ever, nurses need to use nursing ethics when developing their moral compasses for leadership. In this book, the writers focus on ethical knowledge for advanced practice nurse leaders to effect change and improve moral climates in nursing research, education, practice, and policy settings. They focus on social justice and equity as essential values of nursing ethics. Several chapter authors describe ways that nurses can press for improvements in the health care of vulnerable people who may be lacking access to quality health care: for example, Indigenous people, older adults, those who are coping with mental illness, substance use challenges, and those who have a disability. Social justice and equity issues are also explored in a chapter on global health.

This book is structured in three sections, comprised of 22 chapters written by Canadian experts in ethics. In the book, authors map the moral climate for health care and nursing ethics and describe theory related to nursing ethics. They illuminate the use of nursing ethics in diverse populations and with people at all stages of life; and apply nursing ethics to new developments in health care issues and technologies. Educators will be able to bring the content of this book alive with Ethics in Practice scenarios and reflective questions for students that are located in each chapter. Many chapters also include figures or appendices showing models and guidelines that can be used to assist with ethical decision making.

This third edition includes several new chapters, including a chapter on nursing ethical theory as distinct from bioethics, as well as chapters related to people with disabilities, Indigenous health ethics, nursing leadership, and digital health technology. Many topics covered in previous editions are revised and updated. For example, the updated chapter about health care at the end of life now includes an in-depth discussion of medical assistance in dying (MAID). Further updates are included in the areas of research ethics in nursing; the development of the Canadian health care system; nurses as moral agents, and the problem of moral distress; the application of nursing ethics in caring for patients at all stages of life; home health care ethics; ethical issues in biotechnology, and the broad areas of public health ethics and global health ethics. Chapter authors model the use of inclusive language in their writing as applied to gender diverse people and people with disabilities. Extensive references and resources are provided for readers at the end of all chapters.

This edition is cutting-edge as the authors recognize the importance of inclusive language, since language affects attitudes towards people and the way they are treated. In particular, chapter authors in this text model the use of inclusive language in their writing as applied to gender diverse people and people with disabilities.

This third edition is an open access, online publication, meaning that the book is accessible to all with no cost to the readers. This online publication also allows for new features, including two videos, with their accompanying transcripts, where listeners will gain a personal understanding of the contributors’ perspectives. In one video, Indigenous nurse scholars form a traditional circle online, as they discuss nursing ethics from their Indigenous perspectives. The other video showcases two nurses with expertise in digital health technologies in conversation with the book’s editors.

It is the hope of the editors that readers of this third edition will step boldly into shaping the future of health care by becoming more engaged in ethical practice, and becoming more confident in their leadership roles in health care. The content of this text can contribute to the knowledge needed for nurses to make ethical choices knowingly and wisely, so they can demonstrate moral imagination and moral courage in the face of challenges that confront them at all levels of the health care system.


Editors

Dr. Rosalie Starzomski is a professor emeritus at the University of Victoria School of Nursing. She is a graduate of Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Nursing, the University of Calgary with a Master of Nursing, and the University of British Columbia (UBC) with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Nursing. Her research, practice, teaching, and publications are focused on health care and nursing ethics, organ donation and transplantation, nephrology, biotechnology, end-of-life care, and advanced nursing practice. She is an advanced practice nurse leader in nephrology and transplantation, and for a number of years, was an ethics consultant at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and committee chair for several ethics committees. Dr. Starzomski is co-editor of three editions of the book Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice.

Dr. Janet (Jan) Storch is a professor emeritus at the University of Victoria School of Nursing. She earned her degrees from the University of Alberta: a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Health Services Administration, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Sociology. Dr. Storch has been a scholar in health care ethics and nursing ethics since the mid-1970s. She was a professor in the Health Services Administration program at the University of Alberta and developed and taught courses on the history and values of the Canadian health care system. Dr. Storch is a former dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary, and a former director of the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria. She is co-editor of three editions of the book Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice.

Dr. Patricia (Paddy) Rodney is an associate professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia School of Nursing. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Alberta; a Master of Science in Nursing from UBC; and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Nursing from UBC. Dr. Rodney worked in critical care nursing at St. Paul’s Hospital, where she had the opportunity to learn about—and later teach in—a rapidly evolving area of clinical nursing practice. She came face to face with ethical challenges regarding end-of-life decision making for patients and their families, and witnessed the moral distress experienced by nurses and other health care providers. This fostered her lifelong interest in nursing ethics and health care ethics. She is a co-editor of three editions of the book Toward a Moral Horizon: Nursing Ethics for Leadership and Practice.

Introduction to Altmetric Explorer – Understanding Immediate Visibility of Publications

October 3, 2022

Featuring a spotlight on the extensive attention generated by open access publications. 

Altmetric Explorer is an online tool that monitors attention on the web beyond traditional citations for digitally available research publications. It captures mentions for all types of research outputs, including theses and dissertations, datasets, software and code, media files, etc. 

The training session will be led by Patty Smith of Altmetric. This hour-long session will introduce you to the platform and its features, and how individual researchers can use the platform to illustrate the reach of their work alongside traditional citation-based metrics. In celebration of Open Access Week 2022, we will highlight the wide reach of open access publications in addition to a general introduction. There will be plenty of time for questions. 

Related LibGuide: Alternative Metrics by Emily Nickerson

 

Altmetric Logo

What is Altmetric Explorer?

Altmetrics, in the broader sense, are a way to measure impact by capturing online mentions of research outputs such as papers and datasets. Altmetric Explorer, Plum Analytics and Impactstory are some popular altmetrics tools, and the Library has recently purchased a subscription to Altmetric Explorer.

Using Altmetric Explorer to improve visibility of your work?

Altmetric Explorer is an online tool that searches the web for “online attention” of research outputs. It captures the attention for all types of research outputs including theses and dissertations, datasets, software and code, media files, etc. Altmetric Explorer pulls data from:

  • Public policy documents
  • Mainstream media
  • Post-publication peer-review platforms (Pubpeer and Publons)
  • Wikipedia
  • Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc)
  • Multimedia platforms (YouTube, Stack Overflow, etc)
  • Patents
  • Open Syllabus Project
  • Blogs & Research Highlights (Faculty Opinions)
  • Online reference managers (Mendeley)

The overall attention accumulates into an algorithm that calculates the Altmetric Score and provides a visualization (the “Altmetric donut“).

Altmetric Explorer is a powerful tool that can provide contextual information when documenting the impact of your work in CVs, tenure & promotion dossiers, or grant and job applications. Not only does it provide insight into the attention your work receives, it also closes a gap where traditional metrics tend to be in the dark, by covering immediate attention.

The tool helps to answer questions about your output such as “Was my work covered by any news outlets?” – “Are other researchers commenting on my work?” – “Which countries are looking at my publications?” – “Was any of my scientific output cited in any policy documents or patents?” or “How does attention of my open access publications compare to those published in closed access?”.

As an additional feature, the Altmetric Score will be displayed for all content in our repository UVicSpace.

Learn more through our libguide

Attend one of our upcoming workshops!

Introducing Altmetric Explorer

February 28, 2022

Have you ever wondered what kind of attention your recently published paper got in the academic community, before the first citations occurred in other literature? Or what coverage it received outside academia without you noticing? You may not have missed a tweet, but what about media, blogs, or policy papers that mention your publication? In fact, you may be aware of some buzz around your latest publication on a hot topic – but could you ever present that in a serious way in your current research funding proposal? And can something like that even be captured in a structured way, or even measured?  

The answer is yes – look no further! We have just the tool for you!  

Starting in 2022, UVic Libraries is providing access to Altmetric Explorer, which serves exactly these purposes (and many more). 

Altmetric Logo

What is Altmetric Explorer?

Altmetrics, in the broader sense, are a way to measure impact by capturing online mentions of research outputs such as papers and datasets. Altmetric Explorer, Plum Analytics and Impactstory are some popular altmetrics tools, and the Library has recently purchased a subscription to Altmetric Explorer.

Using Altmetric Explorer to improve visibility of your work?

Altmetric Explorer is an online tool that searches the web for “online attention” of research outputs. It captures the attention for all types of research outputs including theses and dissertations, datasets, software and code, media files, etc. Altmetric Explorer pulls data from:

  • Public policy documents
  • Mainstream media
  • Post-publication peer-review platforms (Pubpeer and Publons)
  • Wikipedia
  • Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc)
  • Multimedia platforms (YouTube, Stack Overflow, etc)
  • Patents
  • Open Syllabus Project
  • Blogs & Research Highlights (Faculty Opinions)
  • Online reference managers (Mendeley)

The overall attention accumulates into an algorithm that calculates the Altmetric Score and provides a visualization (the “Altmetric donut“).

Altmetric Explorer is a powerful tool that can provide contextual information when documenting the impact of your work in CVs, tenure & promotion dossiers, or grant and job applications. Not only does it provide insight into the attention your work receives, it also closes a gap where traditional metrics tend to be in the dark, by covering immediate attention.

The tool helps to answer questions about your output such as “Was my work covered by any news outlets?” – “Are other researchers commenting on my work?” – “Which countries are looking at my publications?” – “Was any of my scientific output cited in any policy documents or patents?” or “How does attention of my open access publications compare to those published in closed access?”.

As an additional feature, the Altmetric Score will be displayed for all content in our repository UVicSpace.

Learn more through our libguide

Attend one of our upcoming workshops!

Featured thesis: Behind the green screen – critiquing the narratives of climate change documentaries

By Paige McKellar Strapp Bennett

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/12488

A Master of Arts thesis in the Department of Geography

Abstract:

As the climate crisis continues unabated, documentary films have become an increasingly popular medium through which to communicate its causes and impacts. Such films are an easily accessible form of mass media that has the potential to reach wide-ranging and large audiences, and often star popular celebrities. However, few academic studies have examined climate change documentaries and considered the ‘story’ of climate change that such films create. The lack of critical engagement with climate change documentaries is significant as it suggests the narratives of such films have been left largely unexamined despite their importance as a form of popular environmental communication. In this thesis, I use content analysis and narrative analysis to examine how 10 popular climate change documentaries tell the ‘story’ of climate change and produce specific ‘imaginative geographies’ about regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Though I note throughout my analysis that there are several moments of rupture in which counter-narratives emerge, the dominant discourse throughout these 10 films is one that generally reinforces Western science and technocratic modernity as the solution to climate change, and racialized ‘Others’ as its passive victims. Understanding how climate change documentaries construct their narratives and select their specific topics of focus provides important insight into how popular ‘imaginaries’ regarding the climate crisis have been produced.

To read more, visit UVicSpace

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team

Featured Thesis: Altering the cafeteria environment to improve health: a pragmatic observational trial of nudges and a marketing campaign to increase salad purchasing by first-year students

By Nicole Fetterly

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/12475

A Master of Science thesis in the School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education

Abstract:

Chronic diseases, including obesity are a global epidemic with significant long term mental and physical health complications, as well as societal costs from loss of productivity and health care expenditures. The causes of chronic disease and obesity are multifaceted and are linked to the complexity of eating behaviour, which develops over many years and is a product of our food environment as well as our social influences. First-year undergraduate students living in residence and on meal plans have lower vegetable intake than is recommended for optimal health and disease and obesity prevention. They also gain on average 2-3 kg in their first year due to factors like stress, increased autonomy in food choices and the food environment they face. With more than 2 million Canadian young adults attending post-secondary institutions and the importance of diet to overall health and wellness, building healthy eating habits and preventing weight gain during this life transition is an important public health priority. Nudges or choice architecture interventions aim to encourage public health goals without removing choice for participants. Nudging seems to have a stronger effect in deterring the choice of unhealthy foods over motivating the choice of healthy foods. Conversely, pricing strategies where healthy foods are subsidized appear effective. Many intervention studies have been conducted in cafeterias with young adults but there was a need for studies that compared the impact of nudge interventions against economic strategies on the purchase of vegetables. This study occurred in the main cafeteria serving undergraduate students on meal plans at the University of Victoria (n=1700). A longitudinal, quasi-experimental, single case ABACA research design was conducted and salad bar sales data was tracked. After a baseline period (A), an economic incentive was provided in the form of a loyalty card (B), this was then withdrawn for a second baseline period (A), followed by a cognitive and affect nudge implemented in the form of tent cards and sandwich boards with reasons to eat more vegetables conveyed with eye-catching, colourful graphics and messaging (C) and finally a third baseline measure (A) after withdrawal of the cognitive nudge. The results showed that small economic incentives and nudges were not enough to have an impact on salad bar sales and that they declined throughout the term with too much overlapping data to establish an intervention effect. Larger economic incentives, behaviour or placement nudges and a focus on deterring unhealthy foods may have had an effect but these intervention options were not deemed feasible by food service management in this context. It may also be that there need to be more extensive changes to an individual’s microsystem and that these need to be supported by other changes in the microsystem and further changes at the level of the meso, macrosystem or exosystem through university-level intervention in food service operations or government policy or regulation.

To read more, visit UVicSpace

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team