This book is an Open Educational Resource (OER). The material in this book was built using material from other openly licensed material as well as material created by the Fall 2017 First Year Seminar Fellows at Plymouth State University. It was designed specifically for Plymouth State University’s First Year Seminar with each section representing one of the six goals of the course.

OERs are “free.” This means that users of the text do not have to pay for the information contained in the OER (although they may sometimes have to pay for printing costs if they want a physical copy of the book). “Free” means much more than that, however. Users are free to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the information contained in the text. What do each of these permissions mean? Here’s what David Wiley says about these permissions:

• Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
• Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
• Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

(This material was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.)

This book is licensed using a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This means you are free to share and adapt the information in this book as long as you give appropriate credit to the author(s) of the particular material you use. You also must provide a link to the license and indicate whether you made any changes to the material.

Contributors:

The 2017-18 cohort of First Year Seminar Fellows at Plymouth State University:

Adam Keul

Brandon Haas

Brian Eisenhauer

Cathie LeBlanc

Elisabeth Johnston

Filiz Ruhm

John Kruekeberg

Kathryn Elvey

Kelly Swindlehurst

Kerry Yurewicz

Kimberly Ritchie

Laura Tilghman

Michelle Fistek

Paul Mrozcka

Rachelle Lyons

Robert Nadeau

Stephanie Halter

Tinglan Yang

Wendy Palmquist

PSU Librarians:

Alice Pearman

Anne Jung-Mathews

Bob Fitzpatrick

Christin Wixson

Gary McCool

Mike Davidson