Zero Textbook Cost Initiative
Overview
To support statewide efforts to reduce the cost of learning materials for students, UNF joins other Florida universities in identifying online course offerings that require course materials at no cost to students. Florida’s Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Course Indicator will be used as a course designation to inform students searching the FloridaShines Course Catalog which online courses have no textbook costs. This initiative supports UNF's effort to improve on Performance-Based Funding Metric #3.
How Does It Work
Faculty are not directly involved in this initiative. Instead, they can indicate that no course materials are required by selecting "no text is required" when submitting their textbook adoptions via the Follett Discover tool through MyWings. Each semester, UNF identifies online course sections that meet the criteria for ZTC course indicators by analyzing data from the UNF Bookstore. These identified course offerings are then uploaded to the FloridaShines Course Catalog. For a course section to receive the ZTC indicator, all course materials associated with it, including ancillaries, homework, quizzes, and so on, must be free of cost for students. Additionally, all required course materials must be freely accessible to students without any barriers. To ensure that students can access these materials, they should be available on the first day of class and throughout the course.
Note: Optional resources may be for cost but must not be necessary for student success in the course.
ZTC versus OER
ZTC refers to the student’s cost of required course materials to succeed in the course. Open Educational Resources (OER) refers to materials created by applying open use rights through a content license. ZTC courses may use all OER materials; however, there must not be any cost to students to access those materials.
Displaying the ZTC Indicator
Questions
For more information, visit ZTC faqs or contact Kevin Hulen (UNF Online) at kevin.hulen@unf.edu.