Philosophy 3013: Human Rights & Global Citizenship

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  PHIL 3013
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: These public domain texts are being utilized in a philosophy course primarily for undergraduate students by Ryan Hay at California State University, San Bernardino. The main motivation to adopt these resources was to increase student access to course materials. Students access the texts in our LMS (Canvas).

Philosophy 3013: Human Rights & Global Citizenship
 
Brief Description of course highlights:  Examination of the tension between respecting cultural traditions and the idea of universal human rights. Focuses on the history and philosophy of human rights, along with cultural relativism and contemporary issues.  https://catalog.csusb.edu/coursesaz/phil/

Student population:  Prerequisites: Satisfaction of the General Education (GE) Critical Thinking and Written Communication requirements.  

This course satisfies our GE Category C4; G designation; Writing Intensive designation; and the Global Connections Pathway. Many students taking the course are recent community college transfers interested in satisfying the GE category and writing intensive requirements.

Learning or student outcomes: 
- Distinguish good arguments from bad arguments
- Identify, interpret, and analyze the arguments of others
- Compose and support your own arguments, especially in writing
- Identify and employ philosophical concepts and terminology appropriately
- Identify several main positions in moral theory, including Utilitarianism and Kantianism
- Identify different conceptions of what is meant by a ‘right’, both legal and moral
- Recognize the tension between different conceptions of value and the universality of rights
- Recognize, develop, and reflect on your own moral positions
- Develop your writing skills for effective support of your own positions

Key challenges faced and how resolved:   One of the key challenges of the course for students is the sheer amount and variety of reading that is required.  The main way of dealing with this is to break the readings up into much smaller excerpted chunks.  Prior to adopting the free resource, I used a relatively inexpensive anthology (Philosophy of Human Rights, Patrick Hayden ed.) that had excerpts of about half of the required readings for the course.  A sample of these are listed below.

Sample reading assignments (excerpts from):
Plato – Euthyphro
Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics
John Stuart Mill – Utilitarianism
Immanuel Kant – Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
John Locke – Second Treatise of Government
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Jeremy Bentham – “Anarchical Fallacies”

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: Individual excerpts taken from public domain works on Project Gutenberg.

Brief Description: I replaced those readings from our original course anthology that were in the public domain with corresponding pieces from Project Gutenberg. Since these are public domain works, I was able to edit them to get excerpts of the desired length and substance relevant to my own course.

Please provide a link to the resource  https://www.gutenberg.org/

Student access:  I provide text and PDF versions of the excerpts on our LMS (Canvas). 

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  Combined Fall and Spring enrollments for Phil 3013: 150 students. The original anthology used has a retail list price of $24.95 new. Potential total savings: $3,742.50 before tax.

License: the material is in the public domain

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option.  Primary motivation for adoption was to save students money and to improve access to the course materials.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?  I evaluated online sources for public domain works.  I settled on projectgutenberg.org.

Sharing Best Practices: I found I had to be careful when selecting a public domain version of a translated work.  Some translations differ quite dramatically in quality

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. The greatest difficulty was finding adequate free versions of the excerpted texts, especially those that are translated into English.   Secondarily, I had to emulate the convenience of the way in which the excerpts were provided in the original anthology.  In addition to the assigned readings for the course, the original anthology had unassigned readings, which could be helpful.

Instructor Name:  Ryan Hay, PhD
I am a lecturer of philosophy at California State University, San Bernardino. 

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://www.csusb.edu/profile/ryan.hay

Please describe the courses you teach.  I teach courses on logic (Phil 2100: Critical Thinking through Symbolic Logic) and Human Rights (Phil 3013: Human Rights and Global Citizenship)

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  I teach a range of philosophy courses, but mainly courses in ethics and logic.  I am a regular faculty member at California State University, San Bernardino, but I also regularly visit at Scripps College.  I have taught introductory logic for a while now, and I have taught logic at many different institutions including Scripps, Pomona, CMC, Occidental, USC, UCR, and CSUSB.  I also teach courses on the philosophy of human rights for CSUSB and Scripps College.  My area of specialty in philosophy is ethics.