Gates to fund online courses in community colleges

Online courses provided by some of the top universities in the United States are going to be used by students at local community colleges, in a project funded by the Gates Foundation, writes Sean Coughlan for the BBC.

The edX project, set up by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced a plan to "bring a new teaching model to the classroom". It will blend edX's online lectures and materials with classroom learning. EdX President Anant Agarwal pointed to the value to tight community college budgets.

This latest initiative from edX is experimenting with how these course materials might be used in the classroom by students in two community colleges in Massachusetts: Bunker Hill and MassBay. The idea is to explore how cutting-edge courses from prestigious universities could be adapted for use by students in other classroom settings. This will be funded with $1 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which wants to support innovation in education.
Full report on the BBC site