The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wants to find out whether the massive open online courses that have proved so popular in advanced and often highly technical fields offer the same promise for remedial and introductory courses.
On Tuesday the foundation is circulating to colleges and universities a request for proposals for MOOC’s that focus on the gateway courses that often trip up low-income and underprepared students. The foundation will award as many as 10 grants of up to $50,000 each for MOOC’s in “high-enrollment, low-success introductory-level courses.”