John Wolfe PHIL 1000: Introduction to Philosophy OER Project

Description: 

The course readings were a mix of online available sources, articles from databases that are free to UT students, and scanned fair use images. Here are some examples of the texts that were used:

Descartes, Meditations: http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/

Russell, The Value of Philosophy: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm#link2HCH0015

Krishnamurti, The Right Kind of Education: https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-2-%E2%80%98-right-kind-education%E2%80%99/Education

Plato, Greater Hippias: https://www.platonicfoundation.org/platos-greater-hippias/

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 6: https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.6.vi.html

Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: https://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1785chapter2.pdf (22-36)

Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm

Bostrom, Why the Probability that You are Living in a Matrix is Quite High: https://simulation-argument.com/matrix/

Donovan, Feminism and the Treatment of Animals: From Care to Dialogue (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/491750)

Dewey, Art as Experience: The Live Creature https://archive.org/details/deweyjohnartasanexperience/page/n7/mode/2up

Ahenakew, Sacred Pain in indigenous metaphysics Dancing toward Cosmological Reconciliations https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/CJNE/article/view/197009

Curricular changes: 

The whole class was a curricular change. I took the charge to focus on OER ‘to heart’ and created a class entirely from the ground up with OER as my focus. This meant producing fifteen learning modules, three exams, twelve quizzes, fourteen writing assignments, and over seventy videos to provide an environment where OER wasn’t just ‘tacked on’ but was the major focus of the course. 

Teaching and learning impacts: 

OER has made me reconsider questions of information accessibility. It has dramatically changed how I look at providing documents to students in Canvas. Previously, I simply created a set of folders in my Canvas shell that held the course readings. Now, I create entirely new pages with easy to identify and follow links to class readings. Preparing an OER course has driven me to think about document presentation. To put it bluntly, I want to give my students every encouragement to actually read and engage the text.

OER Adoption Process:

Philosophy is meant to be accessed and lived. Figures like Russell and Krishnamurti argue that education is meant to expand an individual’s horizons and understanding of the world. Russell argues that philosophy provides an understanding of both the self (who we are) and the non-self (everything beyond our lived experiences.) Krishnamurti suggests that education moves us beyond any pre-established understanding or expectation of the self. To put it another way, philosophic education makes us more than what we, our communities, or our cultures could understand. Additionally, philosophy provides a number of important soft skills that are valuable for Utah employers. Providing an affordable, accessible set of readings provides students the opportunity to wrestle with some of the foundational questions on what it means to be human without having to worry about books ‘breaking the bank.’ 

To put it another way, OER is us putting our ethics in action. It provides fair, affordable opportunities to all students. 

Student feedback about using OER:  

It was better because his videos were very entertaining and kept me engaged

· Easily accessible, integrated into Canvas

· Easy accesses, free to use, available whenever

· They have me a wider option of research but sometimes were hard to assess.

Instructor Name: John Wolfe

John Wolfe is the Chair of the History, Humanities, and Modern Languages Department.  His recent research focuses on the philosophy of disability, ethical treatment of part-time instructors and junior faculty, and Moral Injury in returning veterans from active duty. He is interested in philosophy of popular culture, medieval philosophy, and ethics.