Open Maricopa

Mission

Open Maricopa facilitates widespread use of open, low-cost, quality materials to promote student success, textbook affordability, and increased access to a quality educational experience.

Vision

We believe that access to high-quality, no-cost/low-cost, equitable, inclusive, and open educational  practices engages students in their learning, fosters collaboration, breaks down barriers, and opens  pathways to lifelong learning.

Values

  • ACCESS: Open Educational Practices are easily accessible by all students and faculty, including our dual enrollment partners. 
  • JUSTICE, EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY: Open  Educational Practices are inclusive and strive to meet the diverse needs of all learners, including by supporting the participation of new and non-traditional voices in  OER creation and adoption.* 
  • STUDENT-CENTERED: Open Educational Practices are student-centered. 
  • STUDENT SUCCESS: Open Educational  Practices are a catalyst for instructional practices which foster student success. 
  • COMMUNITY AND COLLABORATION: Open  Educational Practices are a community of learners and creators building relationships to share ideas and resources around open educational practices.
  • ATTRIBUTION: Open Educational  Practices are clearly attributed,  ensuring that all who create or remix OER are properly and clearly credited for their contributions.* 
  • INNOVATION AND  CREATIVITY: Open Educational  Practices are committed to innovation, creativity and continuous improvement. 
  • HIGH-QUALITY: Open Educational Practices  are committed to continuous improvement through  thoughtful inquiry, innovation, reflection, design, and  research
     

* Adapted from the Care Framework by Lisa Petrides, Douglas Levin and C. Edward Watson licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Open Maricopa saved students $36,182,300 in textbook costs from Fall 2013 to Fall 2023

Cost Savings

Open Maricopa, formerly known as Maricopa Millions, has saved students over $36 million in textbook costs over the past 10 years.  Maricopa Millions started in 2013 with a goal of saving students $5 million in 5 years, and we met that goal within the first 2 and a half years of the program’s launch.  While cost savings continue to be an important aspect of the Open Maricopa initiative, the current mission, vision, and values show that the focus has expanded beyond cost savings.  The graphic below shows the growth in cost savings from year to year.

Course Marking

Nearly ten years ago, Maricopa became the first higher education institution in the nation to establish course marking of no-cost and low-cost courses in the student schedule. We did this through the course notes in our SIS. With this marking, students can search for courses that have no cost or low-cost ($40 <=) materials that can include OER. See the video explaining this search function. Additionally, we determined the low-cost pricing by surveying our students.

Over the years, we realized that having the no-cost/low-cost marker did not provide the details needed to serve our students' needs best, allow us to do reporting and analytics, and serve our faculty. Therefore, we have developed new course notes that will be searchable by students and usable within the district for reporting and other purposes. These new course notes and search functionality are now available in the course schedule.

  • Low Textbook Cost ($40 <=): Code 0060
  • Zero Textbook Cost: Code 0074
  • Open Educational Resource (OER): Code 0069

Courses can have more than one note applied. For example, if a course has materials that are $40 or less and the materials are OER, they would apply the ZTC (0074) and the OER (0069) notes.

These notes can be applied at the Class level or the Course level. If all class sections of a course meet the requirements of the notes, they can be applied at the course level. For example, if all sections of ENG101 at a specific college are OER and zero-cost,  the 0074 and 0069 notes can be applied at the course level. If only a few class sections meet the requirements, the notes are applied at the class level.

If you have questions about these resources, please email openmaricopa@domail.maricopa.edu