Viking Open Educational Resource Research Guide: Business Calculus Report

Inspired by an LBCC sponsored Open Educational Resources (OER) Implementation Project during the summer 2018, and wanting to provide their students with quality, free mathematical material, Robert Kemp and Simone Nguyen, set out to find free, online educational (OER) materials for the Business Calculus M47 course they teach. It proved to be a challenging task, as there was not much they could find online. The instructors decided to revise and remix from the scarce OER material they could find, but ended up writing most of the material themselves, especially the homework and practice problems, while making sure that all the math topics covered in the online text and course were covered at the highest standard of mathematical rigor. The end-product was a free Calculus textbook, which is available via the class Canvas site.

Cost Savings

The new free textbook, which is uploaded in Canvas for the students as a .pdf file, replaces the textbook used prior, which has a cost of $155 at our bookstore.

Calculations are based upon an average class size of 40 and the number of sections listed.

About Our Faculty Authors:

Simone Nguyen a full-time professor in the department of Mathematics and Engineering, who has been with the college since 2000.  She had been teaching almost every mathematics course offered at LBCC. She is the 2018 recipient of the Distinguished OER Instructor Award.

Robert L. Kemp, is an adjunct professor in the department of Mathematics & Engineering, and has a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Tuskegee University, Tuskegee AL. He has been teaching Mathematics & Engineering for more than eighteen years at University of Phoenix and ITT Technical Institute, Cerritos College, and Long Beach City College. He is the author of a three-volume, physics book series titled The Super Principia Mathematica, The Rage to Master Conceptual, and Mathematical Physics.