Introduction

This O.E.R has been designed to provide an interactive and free digital textbook to students taking the course Earth Science at Linn Benton Community College. The driving themes behind us creating this source is to reduce the cost of this course to students. We also think the O.E.R approach is likely to become the prime resource for textbooks at community colleges in coming years. The onerous cost of textbooks that are required for courses, and yet are only used by students (more than likely) for a single time does not make sense to us, it is not a winning situation for the student or academia.

The construction of this resource has many actors to thank in creating both the resources, time, and energy for us to be able to create it for our students. We must thank all of the O.E.R. authors that we borrowed from to create most of the pages in this resource (Karla Panchuk: Physical Geology First University of Saskatchewan Edition; Steven Earle: Physical Geology 2nd Edition; and Samantha Fowler, Rebecca Roush, and James Wise: Concepts of Biology ) without their available open source materials, we would not have been able to readily create an accessible Earth Science resource for introductory courses. The readily available and well-written material from these sources allowed us to borrow from them, and not spend inordinate amounts of time essentially re-inventing the Earth Science topics wheel. We also would like to thank both Open Oregon, and the Linn Benton Community librarians, faculty, and staff without whom, this resource would not have come to be for Earth Science students. Your contributions are highly valued and appreciated beyond words.

Lowering course costs, increasing accessibility to topic material, and increasing engagement with the topic material leads to a better overall student experience in courses. We believe the O.E.R, approach generally leads to better topic retention due to the removal of an economic stress on students, We also hope that the focus on engagement-focused materials that hone in on the learning objectives Earth Science courses compared to textual heavy purchased materials for what is essentially an Earth Science appreciation course for non-majors creates a more welcoming and fun environment for learning, which in turn allows students to be less stressed out by complex topics, and therefore, perform better in assessments of learning.