Faculty members who wish to mark their courses for Fall 2026 should communicate this information to their chair, program director, associate dean (or whoever builds their course schedule) while the Summer and Fall 2026 schedules are being built by the schools, from mid-October through December 2025.

To make it easy to collect this information, the Registrar has added a column called, “Course Materials Cost” to the smartsheets already used by schools for building the schedule. There are four options:

• Zero-cost course materials

• Low-cost course materials ($40 or less)

• Standard-cost course materials

• Unknown

The first two options will be used to add the respective attribute in Banner. (The other two are included for the sake of completeness, but those courses will have no additional attributes.) This mechanism represents an opt-in opportunity to more clearly communicate to students when faculty have reduced costs for course materials.

The OER team will also share information with each school about courses that have been zero- or low-cost in the past.

The OER Team encourages faculty and schools to share information about course material costs with students through the course schedule.  This is a new process and we request your help in improving it during this pilot phase. 

Questions we have include:

• How can we make the process easier for all?

• Do these terms work? 

• What questions do faculty have about whether their course counts for an attribute? 

• How can we improve this process?

The OER Team will be checking in with our community as we work through this process for the first time.

• Student Cost Savings: Support students finding and registering for courses where required materials are zero- or low-cost materials. Marking such courses in the course schedule puts the information where students can use it immediately (rather than having to check the bookstore).

• Recognizing Faculty Effort: Recognize courses where faculty have worked to reduce costs and reward effort with potentially higher enrollments. 

• Surface Institution-Wide Effect: Demonstrate institutional commitment to saving students money. There is wide support among faculty (97% in the Fall 2024 survey) for saving students money on course materials. 

• Tracking Impact on Student Success: Reliable course marking would allow for assessment of the impact of zero-cost grants and the OER initiative on DFW rates & student success. Course marking will facilitate future research projects.

• Align with State Law & Context: Texas state law requires informing students at registration about course material costs and cost-savings measures. This effort aligns with other Texas institutions who are marking courses in the course schedule, such as Austin Community College (ACC) or Texas State.

Zero-cost includes solutions like Open Educational Resources (OER), materials freely and openly available online, instructor-created materials, library resources, or other university-licensed resources. Students are not required to purchase any course materials. 

• Students are required to spend $40 or less on required books (such as print or digital textbooks, novels, ebooks, WileyPlus, McGraw Hill Connect, Cengage/MindTap, etc.) or other types of required course materials like art supplies, lab notebooks, lab manuals, online homework systems, access codes, clickers, software, cases, simulations, etc. 

• The total course materials cost should reflect the total cost of all materials and does not just include materials purchased through the bookstore.

• As long as one of the formats for the required course materials qualifies as $40 or less, it can be marked as low cost.  For example, if a textbook rental is available and costs less than $40 even if purchasing a new textbook costs $200, it would still count.

• In Fall 2025 bookstore data, 57 course sections had a material cost below $40. Note: This total may not include required materials that were purchased in some other way.

• Recommended or optional materials don’t count.

The term zero-cost recognizes a broad commitment by faculty to save students money.  In Fall 2025, 54% of course sections submitting information to the bookstore listed no course materials, but only 12% of courses were marked as OER. 

National survey data shows that the majority of respondents marking courses used $40 as the cutoff. Analysis of Fall 2025 bookstore data showed only 5 courses that were more than $40 and less than $50.

In Fall 2025, 54% of course sections submitting information to the bookstore listed no course materials, and another 57 (6.7%) listed prices below $40. In addition, 132 courses (15.6%) list a title for materials, but no price is listed in the report. While some (about a third) of the courses listing no materials are placeholder courses or internships, it is possible that up to 76% of courses may be eligible for marking and likely that half of them are.

In Texas, state law requires that universities share pricing information with students when they register or at least 30 days prior to the course starting (HB33, 2011) and that they share information about affordability options with students (SB 810, 2017). St. Edward’s complies with state law by sharing information through the bookstore website.

Hare, S., Kirschner, J., & Reed, M. (Eds.). (2020). Marking open and affordable courses: Best practices and case studies. Mavs Open Press. https://uta.pressbooks.pub/markingopenandaffordablecourses/

Johnson, G., Parks, J., Many, A., Diaz Solodukhin, L. (2024). A Course Marking Roadmap: Recommendations to guide the development and implementation of open and affordable course marking for the benefit of students, faculty, and institutions. Midwestern Higher Education Compact.

Johnson, G., Parks, J., Many, A., & Diaz, L. (2023). Findings of the OER Course Marking Landscape Analysis Survey. Policy Report. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED645370