Use Noba books as a starting point; add additional modules from our catalog or remove any that don't fit your course. You can even start from scratch and build a textbook that's all your own.
The Noba catalog covers the traditional scope of introductory psychology and then some. With modules and counting we're confident you'll find what you're looking for. Using NOBA was an extraordinary success. I used it as both a teaching and testing tool to the overwhelming approval of my students. They felt it was interesting, engaging and helpful across the board. All in all, we students and professor alike loved Noba. Using the NOBA platform not only saved me money this semester, but also time.
Traditional textbooks often overload the reader with information, while the NOBA text I used kept my readings to the point and I felt confident in my understanding of each topic.
As an organizational component, it offers clarity in structure and flow in organization. The text is free of problematic interface issues. Some of the modules could use some audio visuals and more visuals in general. Since many students are hands on learners suggestions for activities are most welcomed. The video in the Consciousness Module did not seem to work. The images and charts appear clear and easy to read.
I look forward to reviewing the supportive resources such as the power points and instructor's manual. Some of the modules seem very culturally oriented, particularly the one on Cultural Psychology and Emotion which also has an audio visual component. I could find no instance of culturally offensive language in any of the modules. The collection needs more examples supporting its content which add diversity of race, ethnicity and global context.
A separate module on Cultural Psychology is advisable. And whenever possible, it is very valuable to include the contributions women and Native Americans and Native Hawaiians have made to the field of social science in our country. Very excited about adapting this approach to learning! I am highly appreciative of the variety of authors presented and the enormous amount of content and resources offered. It includes topics that seem on the horizon such as Epigenetics, Positive Psychology, Neuroscience, new therapeutic treatments.
I would like to see a module on alternative treatments, such as naturopathy and energy psychology. A module on psychology and ecology would be valuable. Though there is a module on beauty, I would suggest more on the importance of aesthetics perhaps in the health section. If revisions are made, I would suggest including more applied psychology, that is examples of how students can apply learning to everyday life and more cultural diversity.
A video collection of various topics alphabetized according to topic would also be useful. Finally, the low cost factor is a strong factor for adopting this approach to learning. These modules have authors over , in total with expertise in the relevant area. Instructors can select and Instructors can select and arrange the modules as they like, or instructors can choose from a few curated selections Discover Psychology, Psychology as a Biological Science, and Psychology as a Social Science.
The content of the book more accurately, the learning modules is very accurate, within the context of each module. There are some apparent conflicts across modules, however, which arise from having different authors who have different perspectives.
These could possibly be contested as issues of accuracy, although it really is just a demonstration of different perspectives on a complex topic. Content is currently up to date e. Sections are generally very well written and clear. There is some variation in clarity across the modules, because of the different authors, but there is a very consistent level of writing given the multiple authors, and there is a set structure for each module see comments on consistency.
The multiple authors makes for some challenge in terms of consistent use of terminology. There are efforts to minimize this issue by having a set framework for the structure of each module: An opening abstract, a set of learning objectives, the main body of the module, a list of outside resources external links , discussion questions, and vocabulary list. This book is entirely modular and, although there are ready-made compilations that instructors can use, there are no constraints on how the modules must be ordered.
The default organization of the modules is reasonably sensible. The modular organization, however, can be changed to any order an instructor would like. This textbook represents the entire catalog of Noba topics. It contains 90 learning modules covering every area of psychology commonly taught in introductory courses. This book can be modified: feel free to rearrange or remove modules to better suit your specific needs. Please note that the publisher requires you to login to access and download the textbooks.
Robert Biswas-Diener has written a number of books including Happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth and The Courage Quotient. He is senior editor for the free-textbook platform, Noba.
Ed Diener is a psychologist, professor, and author. Content Accuracy rating: 5 No content errors or inaccuracies were noted. Content appears to be unbiased. Clarity rating: 4 Overall, content is engaging, readable, and accessible to college students. Consistency rating: 5 Modules follow a consistent framework or format. Interface rating: 5 No interface issues were noted. Navigation is smooth. All images display with no problems.
Grammatical Errors rating: 5 No grammatical errors were noted. Cultural Relevance rating: 5 No culturally insensitive or offensive material was noted.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 Throughout my review the content appeared to be accurate, error-free, and unbiased.
Clarity rating: 5 I found the text to be quite clear, readable, accessible, clean, and engaging. Consistency rating: 4 Overall, the organization, design, and contents are consistent. Modularity rating: 5 The NOBA text us, by design, is easily ad readily divisible into smaller reading sections. Interface rating: 5 I think that similar to the writing the interface was pleasantly clean, clear, and uncomplicated. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 I found no grammatical errors in my review.
Cultural Relevance rating: 5 I think that the NOBA text is intentional and effective in striving for inclusion and variety. Comments I very much enjoyed this text and review and found it to be more compelling, impressive, flexible, and comprehensive than expects.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 The content is accurate. Clarity rating: 5 The text is clear and easy to read. Consistency rating: 5 The textbook seems to have fairly good consistency even with multiple authors across different modules. Modularity rating: 5 This textbook is easily divisible and customizable.
Interface rating: 5 The textbook is easy to use. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 The text is fluent and easy to read. I did not notice many grammatical errors or typos. Cultural Relevance rating: 5 The text does a good job of being culturally inclusive. Comments I highly recommend considering this text. Content Accuracy rating: 5 I found the book to be accurate. Clarity rating: 5 I found the book to be clear and accessible.
Consistency rating: 4 Because the modules are written by a number of different authors, there does appear to be subtle differences in style across the modules. Modularity rating: 4 There are a lot of modules and so it is easy to divide the book into a number of sections that you cover within your course. Interface rating: 4 I struggled to get the outline on the sidebar to quickly move me from section to section.
Grammatical Errors rating: 5 I found the book to be grammatically correct. Cultural Relevance rating: 5 The text covered culture in a sensitive way and was inclusive. Comments Overall this is a huge library of well-written learning modules for those studying psychology and teaching psychology.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 What I've read in this text is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Clarity rating: 5 What I've read of this text is very clear and concise. Consistency rating: 4 The multitude of authors lends to some inconsistency with the "voice" of this text. Modularity rating: 5 The division by specific topics within broader constructs makes it very easy to assign specific concise readings regarding the important topics for the instructor, but also as an awesome topical overview for curious students.
Interface rating: 5 Although basic, the interface of the table of contents and links within the document work well. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 No significant grammatical errors noticed. Comments The page numbers are daunting, however considering this is a pdf and not formatted like a textbook. Content Accuracy rating: 5 The content in the text is highly accurate with a couple of very minor typos here and there.
Clarity rating: 5 The text is extremely well written and accessible for all student levels. Consistency rating: 5 All of the chapters in the book follow the same consistent framework, starting with a brief introduction, followed by learning goals and ending with discussion questions, outside resources, a glossary and references. Modularity rating: 5 The book is divided into modules that have several chapters each, with each chapter averaging around 20 pages. Interface rating: 5 The text has great navigation features.
Grammatical Errors rating: 5 The grammar is very good with just a few typos here and there. Cultural Relevance rating: 5 Overall the text is culturally inclusive. Comments Overall, I found this to be a great text, with a wide variety of interesting topics interspersed with all of the necessary basic information that you would want to include in an introductory course.
Clarity rating: 4 The text was very clear overall, but clarity did vary somewhat depending on the author and content being covered. Modularity rating: 5 There is a great deal of modularity to the text, which is one of my reasons for considering using it. Interface rating: 3 The text is easy to navigate. Comments I found the textbook to be clear, concise, and rather comprehensive.
Content Accuracy rating: 4 I did not note any glaring inaccuracies. Clarity rating: 4 As noted earlier in my review, some chapters have more depth and jargon than is necessary for an Intro text, while others could dig deeper and cover the material in greater depth. Consistency rating: 3 Consistency would be an issue with this type of text in which every chapter is written by a different author, from sometimes very different backgrounds.
Modularity rating: 5 The beauty of the Nova model is that the chapters are written so that an instructor has the ability to customize the modules and chapters they will cover. Interface rating: 5 I was able to navigate easily to websites and online material. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 I found no grammatical errors.
Again the material was well written. Cultural Relevance rating: 3 I did not note any cultarally insensitive or offensive material throughout the text materials I reviewed. Comments I would very seriously consider using this text in an Introductory Psychology course.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 In my reading, I did not find anything that was inaccurate. Clarity rating: 5 The terminology and accessible prose is a strength for the text. Consistency rating: 5 The text does not seem to have any issues in terms of general framework and organization or terminology.
Modularity rating: 4 The text does not need overwhelming meaning that there are enormous blocks of texts without subheadings. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 I did not find any glaring grammatical errors. Cultural Relevance rating: 3 Some of the modules attempted to take a culturally relevant perspective with the way information was presented Time and Culture under 'Sensation and Perception but like with all texts, I think there could be improvement especially in the beginning modules for example, the History of Psychology module: presenting Psychologists of Color and Psychologists that are Women that have made significant impacts in the field or at least attempting cultural relevance with every subtopic.
Comments The full NOBA collection is a great place to start and the way it is displayed on the screen to the reader doesn't seem as overwhelming as a traditional text.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 The text does a great job of being unbiased. Clarity rating: 4 The content of the text is very clear and easy to ready. Consistency rating: 4 The material is consistent throughout the textbook.
All jargon is used appropriately each time. Modularity rating: 5 One of the best aspects of the text is that it is split into several modules that flow nicely with the pace of the course.
Interface rating: 5 The book uses helpful visuals that provide students with additional resources. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 The context shows no grammatical errors.
Cultural Relevance rating: 5 The text is not offensive in any way. Comments I would recommend using this text for WVU psychology students.
Content Accuracy rating: 5 I have found this book to be very up-to-date with modules not found in many current textbooks for example separate modules on epigenetics, neuroendicrinology, and neuroscience research methods. Clarity rating: 4 This is a little bit variable across modules but in general I really like the ease of reading, the quality of graphics, and so forth. Consistency rating: 4 This is again variable just because the different modules are written by different people.
Interface rating: 3 This may only be my lack of experience, but grabbing text and graphics and so forth to package in a way where I can include other things like videos etc. Grammatical Errors rating: 5 The text contains no grammatical errors. Cultural Relevance rating: 5 As good as any other standard textbook. Comments I'm really looking forward to teaching a course based on this book.
Content Accuracy rating: 4 I did not notice any inaccuracies, nor were there any typos that stuck out to me. Clarity rating: 4 Each section is very clearly organized, with a clear introduction at the top of each unit and a guide with key section headings within each unit.
Consistency rating: 4 Different authors for different units can introduce some inconsistencies in tone and writing style — nothing too jarring, but worth noting that it lacks the level of consistency and conceptual coherence of a book written entirely by the same authors. Interface rating: 5 The online interface is very easy to navigate, with a nice search function and a lot of useful links.
Grammatical Errors rating: 5 No problems that I noticed. Cultural Relevance rating: 4 Nothing stood out as insensitive or offensive. Content Accuracy rating: 4 Overall this text seems accurate in that it each chapter is adequately explained and appropriately covers associated content.
Clarity rating: 4 Overall this textbook was exceedingly clear and accessible, almost to its detriment. Consistency rating: 5 The text is consistent both in regards to framework and to formatting. Modularity rating: 5 The text was reasonably modular. Interface rating: 5 I only used this book in.
Grammatical Errors rating: 4 Acknowledging that I am a therapist and not an editor, I did not find any grammatical errors nor were there any editing issues that interfered with my ability to understand the material. Cultural Relevance rating: 4 This text seemed culturally competent because it included many different cultures in its explanation of behavior and application of theories.
In response to problems in our environment, we adapt both physically and psychologically to ensure our survival and reproduction. Sexual sel…. Early life experiences exert a profound and long-lasting influence on physical and mental health throughout life. The efforts to identify the primary causes of this have significantly benefited from studies of the epigenome—a dynamic la….
Being knowledgeable about anatomy and physiology increases our potential for pleasure, physical and psychological health, and life satisfaction.
Beyond personal curiosity, thoughtful di…. The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the …. Vision is the sensory modality that transforms light into a psychological experience of the world around you, with minimal bodily effort. This module provides an overview of the most significant steps in this transformation and strategies tha….
Hearing allows us to perceive the world of acoustic vibrations all around us, and provides us with our most important channels of communication.
This module reviews the basic mechanisms of hearing, beginning with the anatomy and physiology of…. Humans are omnivores able to survive on many different foods. Taste and smell cooperate to solve this dilemma. Stimuli for both taste and smell are chemicals…. The sensory systems of touch and pain provide us with information about our environment and our bodies that is often crucial for survival and well-being. Moreover, touch is a source of pleasure.
In this module, we review how information about…. The vestibular system functions to detect head motion and position relative to gravity and is primarily involved in the fine control of visual gaze, posture, orthostasis, spatial orientation, and navigation. Vestibular signals are highly pro…. There are profound cultural differences in how people think about, measure, and use their time.
This module describes some major dimensions of time that are most prone to cultural variation. The failure to notice unexpected objects or events when attention is…. Most of the time, we perceive the world as a unified bundle of sensations from multiple sensory modalities. In other words, our perception is multimodal. This module provides an overview of multimodal perception, including information about i…. Eyewitnesses can provide very compelling legal testimony, but rather than recording experiences flawlessly, their memories are susceptible to a variety of errors and biases.
They like the rest of us can make errors in remembering specific d…. What do infants know about the world in which they live — and how do they grow and change with age? These are the kinds of questions answered by developmental scientists. This module describes different research techniques that are used to …. This module examines what cognitive development is, major theories about how it occurs, the roles of nature and nurture, whether it is continuous or discontinuous, and how research in the area is being used to improve education.
This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the…. Adolescence is a period that begins with puberty and ends with the transition to adulthood approximately ages 10— Physical changes associated with puberty are triggered by hormones.
Cognitive changes include improvements in complex and a…. The purpose of this module is to provide a brief review of attachment theory—a theory designed to explain the significance of the close, emotional bonds that children develop with their caregivers and the implications of those bonds for…. Emerging adulthood has been proposed as a new life stage between adolescence and young adulthood, lasting roughly from ages 18 to Five features make emerging adulthood distinctive: identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling i….
This module focuses on parenthood as a developmental task of adulthood. Parents take on new roles as their children develop, transforming their identity as a parent as the developmental demands of their children change. The main influences on…. Traditionally, research on aging described only the lives of people over age 65 and the very old. Contemporary theories and research recognizes that biogenetic and psychological processes of aging are complex and lifelong.
Functioning in each…. This module will focus on how attention allows us to select certain parts of our environment and ignore other parts, and what happens…. But as frequently as we use it, have you ever stopped to ask yourself: What reall…. Consciousness is the ultimate mystery. What is it and why do we have it? These questions are difficult to answer, even though consciousness is so fundamental to our existence. Perhaps the natural world could exist largely as it is without hum….
Unconscious psychological processes have fascinated people for a very long time. The idea that people must have an unconscious is based on the idea that a there is so much going on in our brains, and the capacity of consciousness is so smal….
People form mental concepts of categories of objects, which permit them to respond appropriately to new objects they encounter. Just as each of us influences the group and the people in the group, so, too, do groups change each one of us. Joining groups satisfies our need to belong, gain information and understanding through social comparison, define our sense of self and social identity, and achieve goals that might elude us if we worked alone.
Success sometimes eludes our groups, but when group members learn to work together as a cohesive team their success becomes more certain. People also turn to groups when important decisions must be made, and this choice is justified as long as groups avoid such problems as group polarization and groupthink.
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