Are you a Canadian geographer looking for an alternative to the traditional human geography textbook? Help us build one! We’re looking for contributors to write chapters for an Introductory Human Geography Open Textbook, and you could help! Read more about the project below, then head here to participate.
The latest project to join the Rebus Community is Human Geography: Principles and Applications, an introductory textbook that the authors hope will serve as an alternative to the traditional human geography textbook and ultimately, become a replacement for it. Unlike the traditional textbook, this book will focus on applied human geography and help students build practical skill sets that complement core concepts.
In addition, this book will be a Canada-first textbook, written from the ground up to focus on Canadian human geography and human geographic perspectives, patterns, and conditions, but with a twist: while this edition of the textbook is Canada-focused, the content produced will be modular, so that instructors in different jurisdictions will easily be able to adapt the text to suit their regions. This modularity is exciting as it points to the ease of revision and adoption of this textbook in geography courses all around the world. Instructors can also adopt portions of the text as is useful for their classrooms.
Leading the project is Dr. Paul Hackett, an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, whose interests cover historical and geographical patterns of the health of western Canada’s First Nations. Joining him is environmental geographer Dr. Arthur G.Green, an affiliate assistant professor at the University of British Columbia and college professor at Okanagan College, whose interests lie in natural resources, legal geography, GIScience, development and sustainability, and quantitative techniques. Heather Ross and the team at USask’s Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching & Learning have also be instrumental in the development of this project.
Both professors are committed to producing a resource that is uniquely and intrinsically Canadian, while still remaining adaptable for non-Canadian use. The long-term goal is to have an open lab manual with exercises related to human geography that accompanies the text and that will be freely distributed with an open license.
We are currently looking for chapter authors to join this project. In particular, we are looking for Canadian geographers who have advanced expertise in and and can author these sections:
You can indicate your interest in these roles by commenting on the forum discussion.
If you’re teaching geography at an institution in Canada or elsewhere and would like to participate in this project or if you would simply like to follow this project’s progress, you can head to the project page in the forum, sign up, and let us know you’re interested!