OER at College of the Canyons

College of the Canyons implemented our OER program in 2014 and has served as a model for other California Community Colleges who want to expand their use of OER. Our team has developed textbooks that are used to offer over 175 courses with no textbook cost to students!  The OER team at COC is here to support faculty in adopting, adapting, or creating new OER for your courses. They can help you throughout the process from gathering resources to editing and formatting your book so it is ready for students to use. If you have questions or want to get started, email oer@canyons.edu. 

---

Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)

You might have seen or heard the acronym ZTC around campus, but do you know how it differs from OER?

• Open Educational Resource (OER)- Teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.
• Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)- Courses that exclusively use digital course materials that are free of charge to students and may have a low-cost option for print versions.

Many ZTC courses utilize OER material, but a course could also be labeled as ZTC if students do not need to purchase textbooks for other reasons, such as by accessing materials through the library database. Students can learn more about free textbook classes by visiting our OER and Zero Textbook Cost Links to an external site. websites.

ZTC courses are designated in the schedule of classes with a ZTC logo so students can easily identify which sections have free textbooks when they are registering. If you are teaching a class with zero textbook cost to students, follow the steps for Adopting an OER Textbook to ensure students are made aware of the ZTC status of your course.

---

Student success and retention rates demonstrate that students who take courses that use OER complete their courses successfully at rates similar to or higher than those in courses not using OER.