Acknowledgements
This manual was only possible with the incredible support we received from the university community, colleagues, friends, families and other support networks. Undoubtedly, we cannot name everyone who has contributed to the completion of this work. We can confidently say that if you have come in contact with either of us at any point in our lives, you have contributed to this work and we thank you. We owe who we are and what we do to the nurture, care and support that we have received from birth to present. However, we want to mention a few persons who made this particular manual possible. First, we want to thank all who provided financial support to make this work possible. These include UBC Open Educational Fund (OER), the Department of Sociology at UBC and UBC’s Work Learn Funds. In particular, we also want to thank the reviewers of the OER grant, who saw the potential of the project and recommended financial support. We also want to thank UBC Work Learn Funds and its adjudicators who recommended and offered funds to hire a student Research Assistant. We are grateful to the Department of Sociology at UBC and its head, Dr. Guy Stecklov, who gave the green light for the project from its conception, and offered departmental funding to supplement the other funding sources.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to UBC’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology (CTLT), who provided consultations and guidance to make this project possible. Likewise, we are grateful to UBC Library, Erin Fields, and Clair Swanson for providing comments to make the OER application successful, and for conducting the OER search for resources, which informed our writing of the manual. We are also grateful for their support with the publication process, and for the help with Pressbook. Truly, this project would not have been possible without your assistance, advice and belief in it.
The input of scores of undergraduate students really added a special spark to the design and content of this manual. We were blessed to have UBC honours students from as far back as 2016 to as recent as present (2022) contribute to its conceptualization and completion. To all the students who participated in the survey and focus groups, this work would not be possible without you. We are also thankful for all those who offered testimonials (David Cho, Youcheng Ding, Ella Kim-Marriot, Monormy Chadhury, Ryan Stillwagon, Bryan Leung, Anupriya Dasgupta) and who provided feedback on the initial draft (Ethan Shapiro). A big thank you to the Department of Sociology faculty (Dr. Kerry Greer and Dr. Silvia Bartolic) for providing feedback and suggestions which made the work so much better. Any mistake in this manual is certainly on us. We also want to specially recognize Dr. Bartolic for sharing her successful OER grant with us, for lobbying the funding for the project and for offering advice and consultations.
To the personal cheerleaders in our lives, your inspiration, faith and support sustained us throughout the difficulties of balancing our other commitments with writing a manual. Thank you. Finally, to everyone else who we were unable or inadvertently forgot to mention in this space, know that we are grateful for your help and support.
