Fundamentals of Business
On the first weekend in March 2018, Program Managers from eCampusOntario gathered with Business faculty from Ontario colleges to adapt existing Business resources in openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca for use in foundations of business courses. Two teams worked to update and align the existing open resources to Ontario college introductory business outcomes and objectives.
Fundamentals of Business Redux
Team Fun college faculty, see table below for members, worked their way through the text offering suggestions for updates and highlighted spots where interactivities would assist comprehension. College faculty also began to create helpful supplementary materials to aid adoption and use of the text in Ontario college classrooms – physical or virtual. These included: diagnostic quizzes for each chapter; PowerPoint slides for each chapter, and a quiz bank to assess end-of-chapter understanding.
From there, eCampusOntario Program Managers along with Matt Hutchinson sourced Canadian statistics and examples. Program Managers built interactivities using H5P and other, open educational technologies to engage students and solidify understanding. They edited the figures, charts, and text and cited sources using proper MLA citation style.
Major Enhancements
- Recent additions to Pressbooks, supported by eCampusOntario, allow for more engagement and interactivity within each chapter. Adding a quick check in quiz or drag and drop activity at the student’s point of need helps solidify understanding throughout the chapters and text.
- Enabling hypothes.is, another eCampusOntario improvement, facilitates individual and collaborative notetaking. It also empowers educators to connect the readings to in-class expectations and activities. Learn more about the power and potential of hypothes.is: https://web.hypothes.is/
- Injecting Canadian content was a focus. Where appropriate, American information and statistics were replaced with Canadian examples and numbers.
- Learning objectives and text content were updated to align with programs at Ontario colleges and more recent statistics and business practices.
- The majority of graphics were remade with original files included. This will allow future adapters to re-brand more easily e.g., institutional colours, fonts.
The Teams
| Team Fun: Fundamentals of Business Textbook (This book!) |
Communication for Business Professionals |
| Nitsa Andres, Fanshawe College | Michelle Grimes, Conestoga College |
| Matt Hutchinson, Lambton College | Shauna Roch, Fanshawe College |
| Jim Johnston, Fanshawe College | David Simon, Lambton College |
| Anela Tomac, Conestoga College | Terry Greene, eCampusOntario |
| Joanne Kehoe, eCampusOntario | Jenni Hayman, eCampusOntario |
| Peggy French, eCampusOntario |
Gratitude to Luke Wilson for editing the final draft and adding his expertise to the content.
About eCampusOntario
eCampusOntario is a not-for-profit corporation funded by the Government of Ontario. It serves as a centre of excellence in online and technology-enabled learning for all publicly funded colleges and universities in Ontario and has embarked on a bold mission to widen access to post-secondary education and training in Ontario. This textbook is part of eCampusOntario’s open textbook library, which provides free learning resources in a wide range of subject areas. These open textbooks can be assigned by instructors for their classes and can be downloaded by learners to electronic devices or printed. These free and open educational resources are customizable to meet a wide range of learning needs, and we invite instructors to review and adopt the resources for use in their courses.
Upcoming changes
To save a tree, or at least several branches, we chose not to print the Sources or Works Cited pages. However, they are available online and available for future printing on demand. All changes to this edition are recorded in the Version History page at the back of the web version.
