Executive Summary

Project Goals and Purpose

The goal of this project was to develop a comprehensive, openly licensed Psychology and Culture course and textbook. We adapted the existing Open Maricopa Culture and Psychology text developed by Worthy, Lavigne, and Romero, as well as the PSY132 Rio Salado Course. We wanted to include updated information and examples, enhance the student experience with updated images and knowledge checks, and also incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy. We also wanted to share our content more broadly with instructors by making it available as both a Canvas Commons course as well as a Pressbook for those instructors who use other learning management systems.

Key Deliverables and Enhancements

New instructional content:

Our book contains a chapter on “Organizational Behavior, the Workplace, and Culture,” not present in the current Open Maricopa text.
The cross-disciplinary emphasis of the text gives instructors in disciplines like anthropology, sociology, business, history, philosophy, and psychology the ability to apply concepts in their courses.

• 60 H5P activities including interactive presentations, question sets, image choice, flashcards, drag the words, drag and drop, fill in the blanks, etc. With the exception of two image sequencing activities in Module 5.1, all are WCAG 2.1 accessible. H5P activities were embedded to provide interactivity and opportunities for students to test their understanding of the content and prepare for assignments. Almost every content page in each module has at least one knowledge check. Many are scenario-based questions to help students apply their learning.
  
• Substantial text edits in the following chapters: 1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 4.3, 6.1, 6.2, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 9.2, 9.3, 10.2, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 13.3, 14.3, 14.4. New text edits include contemporary research on:
  
  • Culture and identity
    
  • Diversity in the workplace
    
  • Moral development and cultural relativism
    
  • Equality and justice
    
  • Mental illness costs and barriers to treatment
    
  • Cultural influences on specific mental disorders
    
  • Suicide, health equity and infant mortality
    
  • Emotions and cultural display
    
  • Violence toward transgender and nonconforming people
    
  • Parenthood, imitative learning
    
  • Uncertainty avoidance
    
  • Cultural W.E.I.R.D.Os
    
• Most recent demographic data from the U.S. Census, the United Nations, and other statistics-gathering organizations are cited throughout the text.
  
• Updated research citations added to the references at the end of each module. Ensured that all citations conformed to APA 7 style and were properly formatted with hanging indentation for readability. Added DOIs to all sources as appropriate to enhance discovery for other researchers who may wish to update/revise the content in the future. Adding DOIs makes citation chasing much easier as most library discovery products and some AI tools include a citation trail feature.

Multimedia content

• A visually striking Pressbooks cover that conveys the academic, yet approachable content within. Many OER texts do not attend to the aesthetics of cover design, but the first impression is important for both students and instructors in communicating the value of the content to be shared.
  An attractive graphics kit for the Canvas course that provides branding and cohesion for the course. The kit includes a dashboard image, a course banner, and a page footer to ease student navigation of the Canvas course. These elements, in addition to a consistent course pattern, create a learning interface that is user-friendly, appealing, and intuitive, with little extraneous cognitive load.
  
• All images now have accurate attribution and corrected Creative Commons licensing.
  
• We included a greater variety of inclusive images as well, so that students will see themselves in the text/course.
  
• Alt-tags were provided for all charts/graphs to ensure accessibility for all users.
  
• Added AI-generated audio overviews to selected chapters to give students an option to listen to a podcast of the chapter. If students like this option, we can include audio overviews for every chapter.
  
• All embedded videos also include the title and link to YouTube above the video. This best practice serves multiple purposes: 1) If the video’s embed were to break, the student or teacher could use the URL to visit the video online, 2) If the link were to break, the instructor could find another upload of the video or know what it is that needs to be replaced.
  

Assessment of OER content

• Planned student survey questions to be included in the course evaluation for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 to assess the usefulness of the new material. Survey questions are also included in the appendix of the Pressbook, so any interested faculty can obtain student feedback on the course/text.
  

Outcome and Impact

PSY132 was rearticulated for Fall 2026 with new course competencies and a new course outline. The revised PSY132 course and textbook align with these changes and serve as a dynamic, inclusive, and interactive resource. They also meet the pedagogical needs of a diverse student body. The project significantly enhances the course’s usability, instructional value, and adaptability for faculty across institutions.

We would like to include an assessment of the new course and textbook so that we can obtain feedback from students on their experience. The following questions will be embedded in the end of semester course evaluations for Dr. Jennifer Brown and Dr. Julie Lazzara so we can assess the impact of this work. (Questions for the survey will be included in appendix of the Pressbook in case other instructors would like to use them.)

1. This course uses an “open textbook.” In case you’re not familiar with how open textbooks differ from publisher textbooks or e-books, here are some characteristics: Open Textbooks generally:
   1. Can be viewed/read online (on any device) at no cost.
   2. Are permanently available and do not expire.
   3. Are openly licensed (with Creative Commons CC-BY attribution) so faculty can modify or customize materials without special permission.
2. How would you rate the quality of the course materials used for this course?
   1. About the same as the quality of the texts in my other courses using a publisher text (e.g.) Cengage, Follett
   2. Better than the quality of the texts in my other courses
   3. Worse than the quality of the publisher texts in my other courses
3. Was the content easy to read and access from the course compared to other online textbooks you have used (publisher texts)
   1. About the same
   2. Easier to read
   3. More difficult to read
4. Do you feel that the “Test your understanding” knowledge checks included in the course helped you to learn/understand the material?
   1. I did not use them
   2. I used them some of the time
   3. Yes, I used them frequently to test myself
   4. No, I didn’t find them helpful
5. Did you like the AI-generated audio overviews?
   1. Yes, I wish they were in each chapter
   2. No, I tried listening to them, but didn’t like them
   3. I didn’t use them at all

Final Product

Canvas Course 

MOD Press Book: The Connected Mind: Exploring Psychology Through Culture

Contact Information

Jennifer Brown: jennifer.brown@paradisevalley.edu

Julie Lazzara: julie.lazzara@cgc.edu

Paula Crossman: paula.crossman@paradisevalley.edu