In 2013, Tidewater Community College became the first regionally accredited institution to offer a textbook-free degree—a Z-degree. The program was led by a group of faculty members who worked as liaisons between administrators, instructors, and librarians, helping educators find and use OER such as articles, YouTube videos, and websites—anything that resides in public domain or has been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use and re-purpose. These resources allowed instructors to create courses that did not have any additional costs to students, increasing the likelihood that they would be able to complete the course. Indeed, a 2016 study of Tidewater’s Z-degree program found that students who participated in OER sections were less likely to withdraw and more likely to get a C or better in both in-person and hybrid/online courses than students who did not enroll in OER sections.
