Faculty Showcase Adoption title

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID: CWL 213 Comics & Graphic Narratives
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a literature course for undergraduate students by Crystal Lie at California State University Long Beach. The open textbook provides students with access to comics online for free. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to reduce the cost of books for the class. Most student access the open textbook online/digitally.

Course Title and Number
Brief Description of course highlights:  

Introductory study of Comics and Graphic Narratives across cultures and within global contexts by emphasizing visual narrative storytelling as well as the political, social and visual trends that have shaped the powerful creative industry of comics around the world.

Student population: Include majors, typical incoming knowledge (i.e. prerequisites). No prerequisites required; undergraduates; majors and non-majors; GE class

Learning or student outcomes:  

• Identify the basic “grammar” of the comics, or the chief visual-verbal narrative techniques used to convey meaning.

• Explain fundamental theoretical approaches to the study of graphic narratives.
• Discuss different traditions and (sub)genres of graphic narratives and their

social, historical, and cultural significance.• Apply theoretical approaches to (a) your reading of different graphic narratives

and (b) creating your own graphic narrative.
• Analyze the unique affordances and limitations of comics as a medium in

regard to accessibility, representation, and inclusion.

Syllabus and/or Sample assignment from the course or the adoption [optional]: To illustrates how the open textbook is used in the course.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: 

Brief Description: HANDSAIL Publishing is the Deaf owned online business by Matt Daigle. Matt is a well-known cartoonist who co-created the webcomic “That Deaf Guy.” He was inspired to establish HANDSAIL based on his own needs as an instructor and the scarcity of ASL educational materials available to teachers and families. HANDSAIL marries his loves of art and ASL, and the results are materials that are both aesthetically pleasing and utilitarian.
Please provide a link to the resource

https://merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=815376

https://handsail.net/home-tdg/

Authors: Kirstie Poulson, Matt Daigle

Student access:  MERLOT or direct link

Supplemental resources: List resources including online homework systems, interactive study guides for students, and faculty-only resources such as solutions and slides that are available.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.
$20-25
License: Specify Creative Commons "unknown"

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. Save students money,

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? MERLOT

Sharing Best Practices: It's good to mix up your sources. Affordability is an access issue!

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. . Sometimes it’s hard to go fully low cost because you really need the specific literature offered (I teach literature courses) but there are more and more digital options that are cheaper 

Instructor Name 
Please provide your title and your institution. I am a literature professor at CSULB. I teach comics & graphic narratives, introduction to health humanities, and literature & medicine

https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/complit/faculty-and-staff/

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/complit/faculty-and-staff/
Please describe the courses you teach.
Introduction to Health Humanities; Literature & Medicine; Comics and Graphic Narratives
Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.

The goals of my courses are to facilitate opportunities for students’ “light-bulb

moments”—transformative, transferrable instances of connection and self-knowledge—as they navigate texts in ways specific to them based on their interests, concerns, and experiences. I believe that training students to be more attentive readers of the way discourse, power, and knowledge are interwoven in narrative helps build critical consciousness and ethical communication skills, serving to empower students’ educational, professional, and personal pursuits long after class is over. Whether teaching writing, topics in literature, or disability studies and the health humanities, I am driven by commitments to accessibility, interdisciplinarity, teaching transferrable knowledge and skills, and engaged learning. In each of these interrelated facets, I consider the diverse ways my students communicate and learn, and with peer and student feedback, I continue to revise my approaches to supporting them.