Course Marking

Nearly ten years ago, Maricopa became the first higher education institution in the nation to establish course marking of no-cost and low-cost courses in the student schedule. We did this through the course notes in our SIS. With this marking, students are able to search for courses that have no cost or low-cost ($40 <=) materials that can include OER. Below is a brief video explaining this search function. Additionally, we determined the low-cost pricing by surveying our students.

Over the years, we realized that having the no-cost/low-cost marker did not provide us the detail needed to serve our students' needs best, allow us to do reporting and analytics, and serve our faculty. Therefore, we have developed new course notes that will be searchable by students and usable within the district for reporting and other purposes. These new course notes and search functionality are now available in the current schedule.

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Check all Three!

It's important to select ZTC, LTC, and OER options for the best search results, as some courses could be marked with all three.




This video details the new definitions and how to determine what course notes and course markings you should use to provide details about ZTC, LTC, and OER in the schedule-building process. These new notes should be included as you build the Spring 24 schedule. 

Open Educational Resources (Learning Materials),  Low Textbook Cost(s),  Zero Textbook Cost(s), /Course & Class Notes

Definitions for Maricopa

Over the last year, the OER Steering Committee collaborated on the creation of a new set of zero textbook cost, low textbook cost, and Open Educational Resources (OER) definitions to help educate students, faculty, advisors, and staff about OER and affordable learning materials options. These new definitions will:

All campuses will be able to utilize the new definitions in the course catalog and  SIS effective October 2023 for the Spring 2024 semester. As you build your Spring 2024 schedules, please do so using these notes.

Open Educational Resources (OER) (Note 0069)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or have an open license copyright that permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, retention, redistribution, and adaptation by others.

Low Textbook Cost (LTC) (Note 0060)

The total cost of the required materials for this course is $40 or less. Some materials may be provided by the college and only be available while enrolled in the course.

Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) (Note 0074)

Zero-Textbook-Cost Class: The total cost of required instructional materials for this "Z Class" is $0. 


Applying ZTC/LTC/OER Notes 


Currently, classes using notes 0060, 0069, and 0074 are findable by students when they search Find A Class using the ZTC, LTC, and OER course filters (see image). Students use this information to determine how much a specific course’s materials will cost them and to help them save money.  Applying this note by using the note number is the ONLY way that the course will appear in the search results when the ZTC,  LTC, or OER filter is applied. Using these class/course notes allows data to be collected on textbook costs and helps identify courses that fall into pathways that meet the requirements for Z-degrees.

Courses can have more than one note applied. For example, if a course has materials that are $40 or less and the materials are OER, they would apply the ZTC (0074) and the OER (0069) notes.


These notes can be applied at the Class level or at the Course level. If all class sections of a course meet the requirements of the notes, they can be applied at the course level. For example, if all sections of ENG101 at a specific college are OER and zero-cost,  the 0074 and 0069 notes can be applied at the course level. If only a few of the class sections meet the requirements, the notes are applied at the class level.

For additional information or assistance regarding No Cost / Low Cost Textbooks, please contact openmaricopa@domail.maricopa.edu