The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our sixth free and open eTextbook: Building User Interfaces for Modern Web Applications: React Programming by Dr. Cheer-Sun Yang, Professor of Computer Science at West Chester University.
“Since Facebook released React as an open-source software library for front-end programming in 2013, React has gain popularity quickly. Although there are other frameworks or libraries, React is considered a programmer-friendly JavaScript library using the functional programming approach for the front-end web application development. Teaching and learning React can provide training in Functional Programming, Software Engineering Principles, and the Event-Driven Programming Paradigm. The ultimate goal of this eTextbook is to provide a timely support for teaching the state-of-the-art technology as the React ecosystem evolves.
In this eTextbook, the prerequisite concepts about HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap/React-Bootstrap are introduced first, followed by the main React language features. Finally, the Software Engineering Principles are introduced from the design, development, to debugging and maintenance. The main objectives are threefold: (1) provide concepts about JavaScript Programming, (2) introduce the concepts of modularity, functional programming, and (3) teach the concept of reusable User Interface (UI) as the front-end of modern model-view-controller (MVC) web applications.
Although learning other technologies in the React ecosystem is imminent, it is the hope that this book paves the groundwork for the future learning and growing in the field of modern UI development.”
PA-ADOPT is made up of four participating institutions from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education: Cheyney University, Kutztown University, Millersville University, and West Chester University. The PA-ADOPT project is aimed at addressing gaps in the open eTextbook marketplace, improving student learning, and mitigating rising student costs. It is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Open Textbook Pilot Program, and the eTextbooks created by the consortium are released as Open Educational Resources (OERs)
All of PA-ADOPT’s faculty cohorts have been filled, but if you are a WCU faculty member who is interested in building their own OER eTextbook, please contact Marc Drumm, Senior Instructional Designer in the Teaching & Learning Center and Principal Investigator of PA-ADOPT, at mdrumm@wcupa.edu.