14 What Course Marking Looks Like To Students

Open and affordable course markings are grounded in the idea of transparently communicating course material costs to students so they can make informed decisions when enrolling in classes. Enabling student agency is an important step in increasing the potential for students to succeed in their academic and professional careers.

Course markings support students in planning their daily schedules by allowing them to filter by the mode of delivery (e.g., face-to-face, hybrid, online), instructor of record, campus location, course title, class times and dates, and academic session. The ready availability of this information allows students to find courses that meet major, program, or graduation requirements. Some course markings indicate that courses meet specific requirements, such as prerequisites or corequisites, honors, capstone, writing intensive, oral communication, research intensive, diversity, or service-learning courses. Incorporating pricing information, or filters for discovering courses that use open or affordable course materials, furthers student agency by enabling course-level decision-making that accounts for actual costs, individual budgets, and financial need.^[1]

When U of I students log into their course scheduler for the semester, a cost designation for each course will be displayed. This will tell students if a course is:

• “Zero cost” means a total list price of $0
• “Very low cost” means a total list price of $1-$30
• “Low cost” means a total list price of $31-$50,
• “Mid cost” means a total list price of $51-$100,
• “High cost” means a total list price of more than $100^[2]

At first the only courses to be marked will be the zero cost and low-cost courses, with more course cost designations being added as the university continues to develop the new marking system.