Adopt E-Textbooks for Z-Courses

Montgomery College Library supports college affordability and z-course creation by helping faculty discover and adopt no-cost, high-quality e-books and e-textbooks for their courses. This service supports the MC Open initiative, which aims to "leverage pedagogy that fosters student success while reducing costs and increasing access to course materials."

Faculty Select

Faculty Select is a self-service platform that allows faculty to find and adopt an e-book or e-textbook to use as their course text. Faculty Select contains thousands of high-quality titles on a wide variety of academic subjects. All items in the Faculty Select platform will be made available to you and your students completely free of cost. Faculty Select contains three types of e-books:

Procedure

Find an E-Book or E-Textbook for a Z-Course

1. Open the Faculty Select platform.
   Access Faculty Select
2. Search for an item to adopt as your course text by keyword, title, or author
3. Preview as many titles as you would like by clicking the preview links until you locate one you would like to adopt.

Note: If you plan to work in multiple sessions, consider using the Faculty Select folders feature, which allows you to save items for later review. You can use the folders feature with a Faculty Select account, in which case the items will be saved to your account. Create an account by clicking "Sign In" in the purple bar at the top of the page. You can also use folders without an account, in which case you must email the folder to yourself prior to exiting your session. To use, click the folder icon next to the item you wish to save.

Adopt an E-Book or E-Textbook for a Z-Course

The procedure to adopt your e-book or e-textbook varies slightly depending on the type of item you adopt:

Access Your E-Book or E-Textbook

Once you adopt your e-book or e-textbook, you will be provided with a link that you and your students can use to access the item. You can add the link to their Blackboard course menu or share it with your students through email or your syllabus.

MC Library will also add your e-book or e-textbook to our course reserves system. Once we do so, you and your students will also be able to access the item by clicking on Library Course Reserves in the menu of your Blackboard course.

Regardless of how you share it, you and your students will have access to the item remotely, free of change, with no wait. When accessing from off campus, users are prompted to enter their M number.

Obtaining Z-Course Designation

Z-courses are courses in which students will not be charged for instructional materials. Faculty members who have adopted an e-book or e-textbook through the library should have their section designated as a z-course to make students aware of this benefit. To have your section designated as a z-course, contact your chair and campus scheduler to ensure your section is coded correctly in their course notes in Banner.

If you need more information or assistance with z-course designations, please contact Dr. Buddy Muse in ELITE.