Open Writing is a collaborative, non-commercial, open textbook for first-year writing courses at Nicholls State University. Instructors are not required to use it; the Open Writing project’s goal is to provide a single, comprehensive open educational resource (OER) that instructors have the option to use rather than needing to gather readings from multiple sources.

Most of the content has not been written by Nicholls faculty. Instead, faculty and other participants (such as student interns) have reviewed and remixed existing OER materials, in accordance with their Creative Commons licenses, to create the chapters.

The current version of the textbook is available as a PDF and contains the following chapters:

• Understanding College Expectations
• Reading Critically
• Prewriting
• Structuring Your Writing
• Giving Your Work a Title
• Describing
• Narrating
• Analyzing
• Finding and Evaluating Sources
• Documenting Sources
• Conducting Primary Research

Chapters still in progress include:

• Writing Rhetorically
• Writing with Style and Clarity
• Informing
• Using Sources
• Composing New and Alternative Media
• Using Composing Technologies

Although Open Writing is currently only available as a PDF, a more accessible, phone-friendlier HTML version is in the works.

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If you find any errors or have other feedback on Open Writing, please complete our online form. Thank you!