FAQS: OER & Z-Degree
1. Does South Central College have any Z-Degree programs?
South Central College is among the second cohort of Minnesota State colleges to develop Z-Degree programs. As of 2025, these programs are underway. Speak with your advisor for the most up-to-date information.
2. What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that make use of appropriate tools, such as open licensing to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement, and re-purposing by others for educational purposes (UNESCO).
3. What is a Z Degree?
A Z-degree is a complete associate or bachelor's degree program that exclusively use course resources that are no cost to students, such as:
- open educational resources (OER)
- open textbooks
- library-curated materials
To be considered a Z-degree course, the instructor cannot require students to purchase any course resources. Optional or supplemental resources that are a cost to students may be recommended. (Minnesota State)
4. What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.
While OA is a newer form of scholarly publishing, many OA journals comply with well-established peer-review processes and maintain high publishing standards. For more information, see Peter Suber's overview of Open Access.
This information was sourced from Cornell University's Open Access Publishing guide (https://guides.library.cornell.edu/openaccess), which provides excellent guidance on open access scholarly publishing.
See also SPARC (sparcopen.org), an advocacy orgadvocacy organization that supports open systems for research and education that enable everyone, everywhere to access, contribute to, and benefit from the knowledge that shapes our world.