182 research outputs found
Leveraging Library Expertise in Support of Institutional Goals: A Case Study of an OER Initiative at Lehman College
Incentivizing faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) as a method for reducing textbook costs to increase access and affordability of higher education has been an area of development in academic libraries. This manuscript describes the experience at Lehman College, CUNY, the only four-year public college in the Bronx, NY. The OER initiative involves the creation of a new program, which includes assisting faculty with adopting and adapting OER, as well as training and discussion around issues pertinent to OER, such as finding and evaluating OER. The case study explains local conditions and provide an overview of the financial implications for textbook costs that OER alleviates as well as the pedagogical benefits. The repositioning of the Library through this initiative is also discussed
Open Educational Resources: Why Libraries Are Incentivizing Open Content Creation, Curation, and Adaptation
The movement toward Open Educational Resources is challenging and changing the paradigm of academic libraries. Libraries are leading and innovating in the movement for the creation and adaptation of openly licensed content, whereby the creator can retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute content. There are large-scale library or librarian-led projects that are broadening library services, such as SUNY Affordable Learning Solutions, the Achieving the Dream OER degrees, Affordable Learning Georgia, as well as smaller campus initiatives. These projects shift the library’s role in education and increase measurable retention rates, such as engagement, student satisfaction, grade performance, and successful completion of courses. This chapter provides an overview of large-scale projects and then provide an example of the process at Lehman College to start an OER Fellowship, which was adapted from City Tech
Opening the conversation: An introduction to open educational resources
This column explores the concept of, and issues surrounding, Open Educational Resources (OER) for librarians
The Tight Empirical Relation between Dark Matter Halo Mass and Flat Rotation Velocity for Late-Type Galaxies
We present a new empirical relation between galaxy dark matter halo mass
() and the velocity along the flat portion of the rotation
curve (), derived from 120 late-type galaxies from the SPARC
database. The orthogonal scatter in this relation is comparable to the observed
scatter in the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation (BTFR), indicating a tight
coupling between total halo mass and galaxy kinematics at .
The small vertical scatter in the relation makes it an extremely competitive
estimator of total halo mass. We demonstrate that this conclusion holds true
for different priors on that give a tight BTFR, but requires
that the halo density profile follows DC14 rather than NFW. We provide
additional relations between and other velocity definitions at
smaller galactic radii (i.e. , , and ) which can be useful for estimating halo masses from kinematic
surveys, providing an alternative to abundance matching. Furthermore, we
constrain the dark matter analog of the Radial Acceleration Relation and also
find its scatter to be small, demonstrating the fine balance between baryons
and dark matter in their contribution to galaxy kinematics.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to MNRAS Letter
Uncorrelated velocity and size residuals across galaxy rotation curves
The mass--velocity--size relation of late-type galaxies decouples into
independent correlations between mass and velocity (the Tully-Fisher relation),
and between mass and size. This behaviour is different to early-type galaxies
which lie on a Fundamental Plane. We study the coupling of the Tully-Fisher and
mass-size relations in observations (the SPARC sample) and in empirical galaxy
formation models based on halo abundance matching, and rotation curve fits with
a hydrodynamically motivated halo profile. We systematically investigate the
correlation coefficient between the Tully-Fisher residuals and
mass-size residuals as a function of the radius at which the
velocity is measured, and thus present the relation
across rotation curves. We find no significant correlation in either the data
or models for any , aside from where baryonic mass
dominates. We show that this implies an anticorrelation between galaxy size and
halo concentration (or halo mass) at fixed baryonic mass, and provides evidence
against the hypothesis that galaxy and halo specific angular momentum are
proportional. Finally, we study the relations produced by
the baryons and dark matter separately by fitting halo profiles to the rotation
curves. The balance between these components illustrates the "disk-halo
conspiracy" required for no overall correlation.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; revised to match MNRAS published versio
Evolving Into the Open: A Framework for Collaborative Design of Renewable Assignments
Open pedagogy reconceives the notion of who creates knowledge and provides a pathway to empower students as creators. Leveraging open education resources in the classroom results in numerous benefits for students, including free access to knowledge, a participatory culture, and opportunities for innovation and creativity (Hegarty, 2015). Open pedagogical design often results in renewable course assignments, which empower students to create authentic resources that can be positioned to have greater impact through time, space, and gravity, particularly as they have longevity, reach, and value (Seraphin et al., 2018). In this chapter, we will highlight a collaborative partnership between library and education faculty which led to the development of open pedagogical design in a teacher education course. Based on our collaborative processes, we also propose a five-step framework to transform an existing assignment into a renewable assignment
The baryonic Tully-Fisher relation for different velocity definitions and implications for galaxy angular momentum
We study the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation (BTFR) at z=0 using 153 galaxies
from the SPARC sample. We consider different definitions of the characteristic
velocity from HI and H-alpha rotation curves, as well as HI line-widths from
single-dish observations. We reach the following results: (1) The tightest BTFR
is given by the mean velocity along the flat part of the rotation curve. The
orthogonal intrinsic scatter is extremely small (6%) and the best-fit slope is
3.85+/-0.09, but systematic uncertainties may drive the slope from 3.5 to 4.0.
Other velocity definitions lead to BTFRs with systematically higher scatters
and shallower slopes. (2) We provide statistical relations to infer the flat
rotation velocity from HI line-widths or less extended rotation curves (like
H-alpha and CO data). These can be useful to study the BTFR from large HI
surveys or the BTFR at high redshifts. (3) The BTFR is more fundamental than
the relation between angular momentum and galaxy mass (the Fall relation). The
Fall relation has about 7 times more scatter than the BTFR, which is merely
driven by the scatter in the mass-size relation of galaxies. The BTFR is
already the "fundamental plane" of galaxy discs: no value is added with a
radial variable as a third parameter.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Opening the Conversation: Getting Started
This column explores the concept of Open Educational Resources and how it relates to librarianship
Student textbook purchasing: the hidden cost of time
Choice in textbook purchasing has been portrayed as beneficial to students. However, the time spent exploring options for purchasing textbooks takes students away from other obligations in their lives. This research is a study of student textbook purchasing. In this paper, the literature regarding the textbook acquisition process is explored. Students were surveyed regarding their textbook purchasing habits. I found that most students visited multiple stores or websites, but those who purchased textbooks ultimately only purchased from the campus bookstore/bookstore website or Amazon.com. Approximately twenty percent of students reported spending more than two hours purchasing textbooks. The ways in which the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) could affect student time in acquiring materials is also discussed
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