Dive Summary:
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it will fund new massive open online course (MOOC)-related grants.
- Recipients include 10 institutions committed to developing introductory and remedial courses, as well as a study in the University System of Maryland system that will evaluate the use and effectiveness of the online courses.
- The research could eventually lead to findings that might ease the introduction of MOOCs into mainstream for-credit contexts at universities.
From the article:
"... The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding that effort as part of a wide-reaching group of new MOOC-related grants, including research projects to be led by ACE, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and Ithaka S+R, a research group that will team up with the University System of Maryland to test and study the use of massive open online courses across the system. (See related article on the latter effort here.)
Until now, MOOCs have been a source of fascination mostly because they make teaching by top-notch professors at prestigious universities free and available on the Internet to students anywhere, including in developing countries. ..."