Guides: Open Education Resources: Writing Resources

Examples of Available Writing Textbooks

Bad Ideas About Writing
2017
We intend this work to be less a bestiary of bad ideas about writing than an effort to name bad ideas and suggest better ones. Some of those bad ideas are quite old, such as the archetype of the inspired genius author, the five-paragraph essay, or the abuse of adjunct writing teachers. Others are much newer, such as computerized essay scoring or gamification. Some ideas, such as the supposed demise of literacy brought on by texting, are newer bad ideas but are really instances of older bad ideas about literacy always being in a cycle of decline. Yet the same core questions such as what is good writing, what makes a good writer, how should writing be assessed, and the like persist across contexts, technologies, and eras. The project has its genesis in frustration, but what emerges is hope: hope for leaving aside bad ideas and thinking about writing in more productive, inclusive, and useful ways.

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Cheryl E. Ball is associate professor of digital publishing studies in the Professional Writing and Editing program at West Virginia University. She is also editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy as well as the #writing book series with the WAC Clearinghouse/Colorado State University Open Press, both of which are open-access publishing venues available to anyone with an Internet connection. She teaches the importance of edit-ing content in a digital world, and offers a special thank you to all of the undergraduate and graduate students at WVU who helped with the publication of this book. She also thanks WVU Libraries for its support of the Digital Publishing Institute. Finally, she is grateful to Drew M. Loewe for coming up with the idea for this book and for agreeing to let her work on it with him.

Drew M. Loewe is an associate professor of writing and rhetoric at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, where he also directs the Writing Center. His scholarly and teaching interests include rhetorical theory and criticism, argumentation, prose style, legal writing, writing centers, research methods, and the first-year writ-ing sequence. He thanks St. Edward’s for supporting this project with time and money, and especially thanks Cheryl E. Ball for being the best co-editor anyone could hope for.
The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning
2016
The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.

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Linda Buturian has taught in the humanities at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for eight years. She has also taught writing intensive courses shaped around themes of sustainability. In 2006, Buturian was awarded a leave from the university to develop curriculum around the resource of water, and received funding to travel to New Zealand to research water resource protection and sustainability models. In 2007, Linda created a freshman seminar on water that integrates both the sciences and the humanities, and gives students the opportunity to create digital stories about water resource topics. The water seminar is in its third year.

Prior to receiving her masters of arts in literature and writing from the University of Cincinnati, Buturian was the director of a community environmental organization in the Oregon Cascades, which addressed citizen-based solutions to watershed and ecosystem issues. Buturian has published essays, poetry, short stories, interviews, and articles in publications including Shouts and Whispers (Eerdmans 2006), Life in Body (Cathedral Hill Press 2006), and Utne Reader.
EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers
2018
EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class. Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to show their learning while also practicing rhetorical awareness techniques for future writing situations.

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Shane Abrams, Portland State University
Heritages of Change: Curatorial Activism and First-Year Writing
2024
Heritages of Change: Curatorial Activism and First-Year Writing is a method for students to think about the social changes that were prevalent during the COVID years and remain important in their wake. Heritages of Change is a lens for thinking and writing about these ideas. Through curation and exhibition as an act of activism, students focus on a specific audience with whom they can communicate authentically about this dynamic world.

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Kisha G. Tracy, Fitchburg State University
Introduction to College Research
2021
This book acknowledges our changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy to support a research process with intention. We start by critically examining the online environment many of us already engage with every day, looking at algorithms, the attention economy, information disorder and cynicism, information hygiene, and fact-checking. We then move into an exploration of information source types, meaningful research topics, keyword choices, effective search strategies, library resources, Web search considerations, the ethical use of information, and citation.

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Walter D. Butler, Pasadena City College
Aloha Sargent, Cabrillo College
Kelsey Smith, West Hills College Lemoore
A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences
2019
A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

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Dan Allosso, Bemidji State University
Salvatore F. Allosso
A Dam Good Argument - 1st Edition
2022
Arguments are all around us. Everywhere we look, someone is trying to get our attention, change our minds, or sell us something. Learning about how persuasion works will make you a more thoughtful and skeptical consumer of all that content, so that you can come to your own conclusions and recognize the underlying assumptions that inform those attempts to persuade you. 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.

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Liz Delf (MA, Oregon State University '11) developed and piloted the Career Preparation for English Majors course in 2017. She teaches writing across the university and beyond, including sections for the Honors College, INTO, the Beijing Normal University Summer Program, and an INTEL Technical Writing Boot Camp. Courses regularly taught at OSU include English Composition, Argumentation, Technical Writing, Writing in Business, and Intro to Literature: Fiction. Her MA thesis, "'Born of Ourselves': Gendered Doubling and the Femme Fatale in Vernon Lee's Ghost Stories" was selected for the OSU Outstanding Thesis Award in 2011.
Rob Drummond, Oregon State University
Kristy Kelly, Oregon State University

Writing Across the Curriculum

WAC Clearing House
"The WAC Clearinghouse is an open-access publishing collaborative that is supported by the efforts of more than 200 scholars who serve in various editorial roles, including journal and book series editors, editorial staff, reviewers, and editorial board members. "
"The WAC Clearinghouse provides access to more than 230 books, and additional books are in production. All books are available for free viewing and/or download."
Award Winning Books and Book Chapters on Writing Studies

Creative Writing

Elements of Creative Writing
"This free and open access textbook introduces new writers to some basic elements of the craft of creative writing in the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The authors—Rachel Morgan, Jeremy Schraffenberger, and Grant Tracey—are editors of the North American Review, the oldest and one of the most well-regarded literary magazines in the United States. They’ve selected nearly all of the readings and examples (more than 60) from writing that has appeared in NAR pages over the years. Because they had a hand in publishing these pieces originally, their perspective as editors permeates this book. As such, they hope that even seasoned writers might gain insight into the aesthetics of the magazine as they analyze and discuss some reasons this work is so remarkable—and therefore teachable. This project was supported by NAR staff and funded via the UNI Textbook Equity Mini-Grant Program."
Write or Left
"... we'll go over some of the general principles of writing practices as well as advice and tips on how to write creatively, but mainly, you’ll be introduced to as many genres and categories as possible. We won’t get bogged down in doing the writing process “perfectly” or creating “perfect literature.” The goal is to learn about as many genres as possible, practice writing in those genres, and get feedback."