Open Textbooks @ UQ Catalogue

This book provides detailed foundational tools to assess and evaluate the costs and benefits associated with public or private decision making through a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). This book is targeted at students with preliminary foundations in economics. The content and activities have been developed to support learning in ECON2101 Cost Benefit Analysis offered as a course at UQ.

This guide is designed to support students undertaking legal studies and contribute to the development of research skills in Australian law schools.

Designed specifically for UQ College Academic English Tertiary Preparation Program students, this Pressbook offers interactive activities and strategies for developing and refining academic writing skills. Learners are introduced to the writing basics, such as parts of speech, sentence and paragraph structure, right through to writing, editing , and refining their own essay. Students will have the opportunity to review key parts of the writing process from interpreting their assignment instructions, organizing their ideas, drafting their writing, and revising their work before final submission. In addition, students will learn key oral presentation skills for both group and individual class presentations. Also, it offers students the opportunity to develop as critical thinkers and write sound and valid academic arguments. The contents are supported by in-class practice and while it has been designed as an integral part of the TPP Academic English syllabus, it will enhance the writing skills of anyone new to academic writing.

This book is a multidisciplinary introduction to the social sciences with an applied approach to the study of human society. This book examines diverse aspects of social life from multiple perspectives, incorporating analytical and methodological insights in a wide range of social science disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, political science, public policy, psychology and human geography. Through real cases of contemporary issues and social problems, students will explore a wide range of topics that shape both Australia and the world today – the changing nature of work and education, the environment and health, community and development. Using a blend of text, video, and online materials, students will learn the skills for independent study and collaborative investigation. Upon the successful completion of this book, students will have gained critical knowledge on Australian and global social issues, relevant policies, and possible solutions.

Over the last two decades, sustainability has become a widespread normative framework or regulatory idea – mostly communicated in a context of sustainable development and thus as ‘alternative to’ or ‘fight against climate change’. Sustainability is generally defined as the fact that a given activity or action is capable of being sustained and therefore continued, related to the responsibility for the future, meeting global needs, the protection of the environment, development and ecocultural consciousness as a deeper logic and matter of life, as well as participation and engagement. Thus, sustainability communication encompasses the relationship between humans and their environment and focuses on social discourses (Godemann at al., 2011). Here, a critical approach seems to be fruitful to grasp the largely amorphous concept of sustainability that gets bent into many different shapes in the public sphere (Weder et al., 2019a; 2021; Dimitrov, 2018).

For the introductory book at hand, we focus on the role of strategic communication in shaping sustainability as current narrative of our society in relation to the ‘old’ climate change narrative of destruction and imbalance between human and nature. Therefore, we conceptualize the evolution of the sustainability narrative as core process of strategic communication. We focus on organizations and their responsibility towards the society (Corporate Social Responsibility) and identify the potential of strategic communication for a transition of the old to the ‘new’ narrative.

After the clarification of the basic paradigms of Corporate Responsibility, Environmental and Social Governance, and Sustainability as normative framework and narrative of the future, we introduce the basic paradigms of communication, communication from a functional, rather instrumental and critical, social-constructivist perspective, before we focus on sustainability and CSR communication and related strategies and tactics of content-related, storytelling-focused communication management.

In this introductory book on CSR and Sustainability Communication, we discuss the evolution of the sustainability story in corporate, political, and environmental discourses as well as paradigms and theoretical approaches to better understand communication about, of and for sustainability. The textbook follows a strategic communication perspective and offers practical examples and exercises for making sustainability and related issues accessible and comprehensible, for co-creating social change. The book offers students and instructors as well as (future) communication strategists and campaigners foundations, strategies, tools and methodologies of sustainability communication to create a new story and take authorship for the new narrative. Furthermore, it attracts professionals, advocates, and academics who are passionate about taking proactive roles in restoratively addressing the pressing interrelated sociocultural and ecological issues if our times, to become reflexive leaders and advocates.

Using language data to learn about language: A teachers’ guide to classroom corpus use contains English, Portuguese and Spanish teaching resources to be used in international language classes. These resources can be used in classrooms with internet access (hands on) or without (hands off). The idea behind using corpora in the classroom is that learners will play the role of language “detectives”, taking charge of their own learning process while working with others to investigate the language in use. Corpora are large collections of electronic text that learners can query and manipulate to learn about language through repeated exposure. Learners are encouraged to observe data, create hypotheses, formulate rules on linguistic patterns (i.e., an inductive approach), and/or verify the validity of grammatical rules from textbooks (i.e., a deductive approach). This perspective is called Data-Driven Learning (DDL), and is now widely featured in Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) research (Boulton, 2010; Crosthwaite, 2020; Frankenberg-Garcia, 2021; Pérez-Paredes, 2020; Scott, 2010; among others). This collection of ready-made DDL lesson plans is curated to help both new and experienced teachers introduce DDL concepts into their language lesson planning. In each lesson, teachers and learners will find a description of the target tool and a link to a short video, in which the author(s) of the lesson explain(s) how this tool can be used. Detailed lesson plans are included, which can be used as a starting point or as an inspiration for the creation of future class activities. Most of the lesson activities can be done 1) with access to the internet (hands on); and/or 2) without access to the internet (hands off). This is useful for schools where students are not allowed to use their own devices, or where internet access is not available.

‘What an amazing resource for students. The mixture of accessible and informative text, case studies, interactive activities, and more make this such an engaging read.’  Professor Kelly Fielding, University of Queensland

‘This book is an excellent resource for students, practitioners, and community organisations among others, which provides a comprehensive overview and deeper insights situating public interest communication in society.’ Assistant Professor Michele Clark, Bond University

‘Students will find Johnston and Gulliver’s book an excellent introduction to the theoretical debates around the concept of the ‘public interest’, an idea which is of central importance in ethics, democratic government, the law, and the notion of a ‘free press’.’ Dr Ian Somerville, University of Leicester

‘This is a fabulous introduction to key concepts in public interest communication. It untangles the notion of ‘publics’ and shows how theories of the public interest, the public sphere, and discourse arenas, among others, intersect with communication practice.’  Dr Skye Doherty, University of Queensland

‘This book shines a spotlight on the strategic value and purpose of communication by showing its centrality to finding solutions. While addressing action as well as theory, it goes beyond the usual tactical-level discussion to focus on the context in which communication contributes to society.’ Dr Leanne Glenny, University of South Australia

This book showcases the many contributions that women worldwide have made to tourism research. It also serves as a collective mentoring platform, containing letters written by women to the future generations of tourism researchers and passing on invaluable observations and advice.

Exercise Delivery is an open access, introductory text intended for students and professionals in the field of exercise science and exercise physiology. It contains instructional videos on the delivery of exercises and their variations, with supplementary activities on the selection of exercises, muscle recruitment and activation during exercises, and the adaptation of exercises for various populations. The book is sectioned into resistance exercise delivery for each of the key muscle groups of the human body, and aerobic exercise delivery.

+JUNTXS is an open access educational resource which can be used in conjunction with a variety of approaches to support intermediate learners of Spanish. This media-rich learning resource is designed to guide learners in their Spanish language learning journey through a critical and intercultural lens and to provide regular opportunities to explore, practice and improve their ability to read, speak, and understand this language as it is used across the Spanish-speaking world.