BCcampus is part of a consortium of Pacific Northwest higher education organizations on the receiving end of a $749,994 grant from the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) - http://nextgenlearning.org/the-grants/wave-I-winners#36 an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The winning proposal was based on online science courses and Remote Web-Based Science Lab, a BCcampus Online Program Development Fund initiative, which gained the attention of higher education organizations in the United States. With this grant, the B.C.-developed online science labs will be adapted for use at colleges and universities in the U.S.

Through the BCcampus Online Program Development Fund (OPDF), a consortia of BC post-secondary institutions developed online science courses for biology, chemistry and physics and a Remote Web-Based Science Lab for online delivery of the lab portion of those courses using remote scientific instrumentation controlled by students over the web. The resources coming out of this development are licensed for sharing and reuse as open educational resources through Creative Commons licenses.

This innovative work caught the attention of higher ed organizations in the United States, and BCcampus and B.C. post-secondary partners joined with the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) to apply for money from the Next Generation Learning Challenges for consortia development of open, interactive core courseware...

The Gates Foundation in partership with Educause has launched a Next Generation Learning Challenge (NGLC) seeking to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States through the use of information technology, especially for the benefit of low-income young adults. The program provides investment capital, builds evidence, and fosters an active community of innovators and adopters in pursuit of this goal. The program emphasizes identifying proven and emerging technology‐enabled solutions, and moving them from “islands of innovation” to greater scale.

BCcampus and some of its BC public post secondary institutional partners is participating in two grant applications to this program...