Textbook Affordability (ZTC-OER-LTC)

OER stands for Open Educational Resources and is linked to an educational movement and has become a global educational movement.

Faculty who use OER in their courses are using freely available, high-quality educational resources in order to bring textbook costs down for students. OER, in essence, then are freely available, openly licensed resources -- textbooks, media, videos, articles, and more -- that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes

There are many reasons why faculty may choose to use OER including but not limited to: 

1.  Improve student learning
2. Increase equitable access to learning materials
3. Customization of OER materials to reflect community or learning needs

Image Attribution: OER breaking the chains of textbook cost  by Jonathan Poritz and is licensed under a CC BY SA License.

Low Textbook Costs (LTC) is a locally defined designation of $30 or less (pretax) for all required course materials including: textbooks, workbooks, lab manuals, readers, or specialized software like online homework systems. 

• Though there are some books that are not offered through Mendocino College Bookstore, LTC designation is determined by total cost in the MC Online Bookstore for new materials, unless unavailable. 

LTC does not include supplemental materials that are required to successfully complete the course. Examples of supplemental materials are lab coats and kits, goggles, calculators, blue books, scantron forms, art supplies, etc.

Mendocino College Institutional Research published a ZTC Dashboard with the latest findings.

As of May 16, 2024

• Total student savings of $834,300
• 722 ZTC sections 
• 9,496 ZTC students 
• 1,974 ZTC course sections