This book begins not only with public speaking as a skill, but with communication as a human practice. From interpersonal conversations to civic speeches, from face-to-face dialogue to AI-mediated interaction, our ability to communicate with care and clarity has never been more important or more complex.
A practical guidebook helping higher education faculty integrate AI thoughtfully into teaching while protecting student cognitive development. Introduces four frameworks: FLUFF/SPARK for cognitive triage, the Intelligent Gearbox for advanced prompting, the Cognitive Gym for AI-resistant assessment design (including the AI Audit verification protocol), and the VINE Framework for developing evaluative judgment. Based on neuroscience research and designed for immediate classroom application. First edition, January 2026.
Engineering Signal Analysis - Theory, is an introductory textbook on the analysis of signals in time and frequency. It takes an engineer’s perspective and discusses how to characterize, analyze and operate on signals. The basic theoretical concepts, Fourier series and transform, are explained in continuous time. It then introduces discrete-time signals, addressing how sampling and finite signal duration affect spectral analysis. It discusses the discrete Fourier transform and its use in spectral estimation. The book concludes with an introduction to linear systems and signal filtering.
This handbook guides students through concepts, content, and exercises that help them develop media literacy by understanding media and power. The authors want students to not only gain the ability to critically analyze the languages and discourses – textual, visual, audio, and code – that people use to create and interpret media content, but also to understand the overarching context: media possess immense power in contemporary societies around the world.
Semillas: Elementary Spanish II is an intermediate Spanish open-access textbook with reading, listening, speaking, and writing practice. It is a follow-up to Semillas: Elementary Spanish I, with beginning chapters modeling the last two lessons from the previous textbook. The textbook provides instructors and students with lessons, vocabulary lists, videos, PDFs, projects, and exercises.
Kevin J. Hinders’s The Design of the Built Environment offers an exploration of the architectural, cultural, and historical development of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus and its surrounding context. Structured around thematic walking tours, the manuscript examines architectural principles and then uses the campus and its surroundings to illustrate the concepts. It delves into the evolution of public spaces, technical design considerations, and the influence of local, regional, and national planning. Through case studies, historical analysis, and design theory, Hinders illustrates how built environments reflect collective values, cultural shifts, and functional needs. The work emphasizes experiential learning and encourages readers to engage with the built world through observation, reflection, and spatial understanding.
Publisher:
Minnesota State Colleges and Universities
License:
CC BY-NC-SA
This book is an introduction to some influential theories in philosophy of art. It combines excerpts of historically important texts from European and American culture with explanations of the key ideas in those texts. The most recent of these texts dates from 1929.
Constitutional Law with a Twist: Less is More is designed for a one-semester survey course on federal constitutional law. The casebook covers the content of a typical four-credit survey course: the structure of the U.S. government and individual rights (other than First Amendment rights and rights unique to criminal law). What differentiates this casebook from most other constitutional law casebooks is that this book is deliberately short. It reflects the author’s philosophy that students often experience more joy, more depth, and more growth in an introductory course on constitutional law when there is less reading, more emphasis on contemporary cases, and more feedback on interim work. The book’s preface and the introduction to the accompanying teacher’s manual describe the book’s approach in detail to help faculty decide whether this casebook is a good fit for them and their students.