NEW: OER and Z Degree at MCC
The Z Degree
Riding the OER movement’s momentum, Maricopa Millions’ success, and Zero Textbook Cost initiatives at other colleges, Laura Ballard, eLearning Director, began funding faculty through mini-grants to develop fully online courses using resources that are either OER or free to students. The first cohort of faculty began development in Fall 2017 and the Z Degree program at MCC was born. The goal was to complete the courses in the Arizona General Education Curriculum or AGEC, allowing students to transfer a certificate to Arizona state universities. The classes leverage Open Educational Resources, library databases, and faculty-developed content to forgo the need to require expensive textbooks and publisher materials. Currently, only online courses are eligible for funding; however, the funded course content can be used to facilitate a course in another modality and can also be tagged as Z Degree in the course schedule.
Current Z Degrees
Now that the AGEC, the Associate in Arts, Emphasis in Communication are complete, and the Associate in Arts, Emphasis in Anthropology are complete we are ready for our next degree pathway. If you are interested in adding your program to future cycles please reach out to Laura Ballard. To review a complete listing of courses visit the Z Course and Z Degree page.
Z Degree in the News
Over the last year, the employees that make up MCC Online have been hard at work expanding the MCC’s commitment to lowering the cost of the college experience for our students. Through the collaborations with departments across campus and consultations with faculty to develop Z courses and Z Degrees, these efforts have been recognized inside and outside of the institution.
2022 Articles
(SPARC) OER Helps Buoy Gen Ed Success at Community Colleges and Universities
OER Committee
The MCC OER Committee was formed in Fall 2019 after approval from College President Rich Haney. The committee is open and is comprised of faculty and staff from across the college. The committee is sponsored by the eLearning Department. The members of the committee serve as resources to the college to answer questions about OER and actively work toward reducing the cost of learning materials for students. Feel free to reach out to any of the members with questions or join the committee.
OER Student Awareness
The OER Committee released MCC’s first student awareness video. The video has been shared with all of the colleges in the district through the District OER Steering Committee and can be found on the MCC website on the Advisement web page.