Within the past year, the Idaho State Board of Education has pushed hard for the adoption of “Project Z”. Project Z’s goal is zero cost textbooks. That is what the “Z” in the project stands for – Zero Cost. During the “building Idaho’s future” initiative, the Idaho state legislature and Governor Brad Little invested over $1,000,000 into the project. “It really works well at the community college level because Idaho has common courses for General Education, making it easier to share curriculum resources across these courses,” Dr. TJ Bliss (Idaho State Board of Education’s Chief Academic Officer) said. “Idaho faculty have developed a new textbook for first year writing courses, for example, that is open licensed (meaning other faculty can adopt and adapt it for their courses) and freely available to students online through the Idaho Open Press.”
North Idaho College held a workshop on November 2nd for discussion on creating OER (Open Education Resources) texts for those instructors who were interested in participating. The state has decided to provide faculty compensation for those willing to adopt or create an OER text.
Adoption of Project Z is intended for Fall 2023 semester across the state’s four main community colleges, which includes NIC. It is presently unclear how many professors are interested in the initiative, though attendance appeared to be high.
What other options are there to help solve the textbook cost problem? OER is certainly one of them, though many students would benefit from the requested textbooks that their professors ask them to use merely be a suggestion, and not a determining factor in their grades for the semester or regular coursework. While this might be hard for some instructors to accomplish due to the nature of their classes, it needs to be looked into if those instructors wish to help lift an economic burden from their students. College is meant to be a place of learning, not a wallet milking zone.
