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This NSCC open textbook is adapted from the Lumen Learning openly licenced course Principles of Marketing. The textbook uses current case studies and engaging, real-world scenarios to help students recognize and analyze marketing in business as well as in everyday life. Curated OER readings, videos, simulations and other learning activities introduce students to the principles of marketing.

This book is designed to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level. The focus on behaviour and empiricism has produced a text that is better organized, has fewer chapters, and is somewhat shorter than many of the leading books. The beginning of each section includes learning objectives; throughout the body of each section are key terms in bold followed by their definitions in italics; key takeaways, and exercises and critical thinking activities end each section.

To facilitate learning outcomes, three techniques have been used:

1. Chapter openers.The focus on behaviour begins each chapter with an opener showcasing an interesting real-world example of people who are dealing with behavioural questions and who can use psychology to help them answer those questions. The opener is designed to draw the student into the chapter and create an interest in learning about the topic.
2. Psychology in everyday life.Each chapter contains one or two features designed to link the principles from the chapter to real-world applications in business, environment, health, law, learning, and other relevant domains. For instance, the application in Chapter 7 “Growing and Developing” — “What Makes a Good Parent?” — applies the concepts of parenting styles in a mini handbook about parenting, and the application in Chapter 4, “Brains, Bodies, and Behaviour,” is about the difficulties that left-handed people face performing everyday tasks in a right-handed world.
3. Research focus.Empiricism is also emphasized throughout, but without making it a distraction from the main story line. Each chapter presents one or more close-ups on research — well-articulated and specific examples of research within the content area, each including a summary of the hypotheses, methods, results, and interpretations. This feature provides a continuous thread that reminds students of the importance of empirical research. The research foci also emphasize the fact that findings are not always predictable ahead of time (dispelling the myth of hindsight bias) and help students understand how research really works.

In short, the authors  have attempted to bring psychology to life in ways that really matter to students while, at the same time, maintaining content and conceptual rigor, with a strong focus on the fundamental principles of empiricism and the scientific method.

Provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of psychology and understand how those concepts apply to their lives. A comprehensive coverage of core concepts is grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research, including coverage of the DSM-5 in discussions of psychological disorders. Incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.

This study guide is designed to accompany the Introduction to Psychology – Ist Canadian Edition open text by Jennifer Walinga and Charles Stangor (https://open.bccampus.ca/find-open-textbooks/?uuid=8390d51e-0efe-493c-881c-cf86852a612f&contributor=&keyword=&subject=Psychology). For each chapter it summarizes the learning objectives and presents multiple-choice, true-false and fill-in-the-blank tests of the material covered. It provides links to resources to enable students to deepen their understanding of key topics and to explore related issues. Finally, it offers suggestions for hands-on activities relevant to each chapter.

Introductory Business Statistics with Interactive Spreadsheets – 1st Canadian Edition is an adaptation of Thomas K. Tiemann’s book, Introductory Business Statistics. This new edition still contains the basic ideas behind statistics, such as populations, samples, the difference between data and information, and sampling distributions as well as information on descriptive statistics and frequency distributions, normal and t-distributions, hypothesis testing, t-tests, f-tests, analysis of variance, non-parametric tests, and regression basics. New topics include the chi-square test and categorical variables, null and alternative hypotheses for the test of independence, simple linear regression model, least squares method, coefficient of determination, confidence interval for the average of the dependent variable, and prediction interval for a specific value of the dependent variable.

This new edition also allows readers to learn the basic and most commonly applied statistical techniques in business in an interactive way — when using the web version — through interactive Excel spreadsheets. For each topic, a customized interactive template has been created within which selected values can be repeatedly changed to observe how the entire process, as well as the outcomes, are automatically adjusted.

Also, in this adapted edition, the real-world examples throughout the text, and the information in general, have been revised to reflect Canadian content.

The goal of this textbook is not to make you an expert. True expertise in any field is a years-long endeavor. Here I will survey some of the basic topics of chemistry. This survey should give you enough knowledge to appreciate the impact of chemistry in everyday life and, if necessary, prepare you for additional instruction in chemistry. Throughout each chapter, I present two features that reinforce the theme of the textbook—that chemistry is all around you. The first is a feature titled, appropriately, “Chemistry Is Everywhere.” Chemistry Is Everywhere” focuses on the personal hygiene products that you may use every morning: toothpaste, soap, and shampoo, among others. These products are chemicals, aren’t they? Ever wonder about the chemical reactions that they undergo to give you clean and healthy teeth or shiny hair? I will explore some of these chemical reactions in future chapters. But this feature makes it clear that chemistry is, indeed, everywhere. The other feature focuses on chemistry that you likely indulge in every day: eating and drinking. In the “Food and Drink App,” I discuss how the chemistry of the chapter applies to things that you eat and drink every day. Carbonated beverages depend on the behavior of gases, foods contain acids and bases, and we actually eat certain rocks. (Can you guess which rocks without looking ahead?) Cooking, eating, drinking, and metabolism—we are involved with all these chemical processes all the time. These two features allow us to see the things we interact with every day in a new light—as chemistry.

Principles of Marketing is adapted from a work produced by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This adapted edition is produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative.

Principles of Marketing teaches the experience and process of actually doing marketing – not just the vocabulary. It carries five dominant themes throughout in order to expose students to marketing in today’s environment:

Service dominant logic — This textbook employs the term ”offering“ instead of the more traditional First “P” — product. That is because consumers don’t sacrifice value when alternating between a product and a service. They are evaluating the entire experience, whether they interact with a product, a service, or a combination. So the fundamental focus is providing value throughout the value chain, whether that value chain encompasses a product, service, or both.

Sustainability — Increasingly, companies are interested in the impact they are having on their local community as well as the overall environment. This is often referred to as the ”triple bottom line“ of financial, social, and environment performance.

Ethics and social responsibility — Following on the sustainability notion is the broader importance of ethics and social responsibility in creating successful organizations. The authors make consistent references to ethical situations throughout chapter coverage, and end of chapter material in most chapters will encompass ethical situations.

Global coverage — the authors deliberately entitled Chapter 1 ”What is Marketing?“ Whether it is today’s price of gasoline, the current U.S. presidential race, or Midwestern U.S. farming, almost every industry and company needs strong global awareness. And today’s marketing professionals must understand the world in which they and their companies operate.

Metrics — Firms today have the potential to gather more information than ever before about their current and potential customers. That information gathering can be costly, but it can also be very revealing. With the potential to capture so much more detail about micro transactions, firms should now be more able to answer ”well, what this marketing strategy really worth it?“ And ”what is the marketing ROI?“ And finally, ”what is this customer or set of customers worth to us over their lifetime?“

Images © NSCC. All Rights Reserved.

This book covers the basics of project management.

Cover image: Project management by Gerd Altmann used under aPixabay free license