Within the past year, the Idaho Department 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 (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.”
