Karla Heurich Harrison ’28 Director of the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment
Professor Derek Turner teaches philosophy and is the director of the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment at Connecticut College. He is known for his engaging teaching style and dedication to making complex subjects accessible to students. In addition to his scholarly work, Professor Turner wrote and published an open educational resource (OER) titled Form and Content: An Introduction to Formal Logic.
Form and Content is an open textbook freely available to the public. It introduces students to the fundamentals of formal logic in a clear and engaging way. Published in 2020, the textbook was written in response to the high cost of traditional textbooks and the rigid publishing cycles that often leave students with expensive but minimally updated editions.
In Form and Content, Professor Turner presents formal logic through a blend of rigorous instruction and lighthearted examples, such as dinosaurs and his dog, Toby, to make learning logic enjoyable and accessible. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the structure—or form—of arguments, rather than getting caught up in their content, which can distract learners when they first encounter formal logic. Professor Turner helps demystify formal logic for newcomers, ensuring that students can engage critically with the material without being overwhelmed by technical jargon.
Form and Content is hosted on Digital Commons, Connecticut College’s institutional repository, where it can be accessed and downloaded for free. The textbook has been downloaded 5,596 times since January 2020 in countries around the world. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, allowing anyone to download, share, and use it as long as it is not for commercial purposes, and the original author is credited.
This textbook is part of the growing OER movement, which seeks to make educational resources freely available to all, breaking down barriers to education and reducing the financial burden on students. Professor Turner’s work is a valuable contribution to this movement, offering a high-quality, accessible alternative to the costly traditional textbooks often required for logic courses.
