Gov. Jay Nixon today announced that Missouri’s 13 public four-year universities will receive a $250,000 education grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Next Generation Learning Challenges funds will be used to redesign courses using technology to improve student learning, and promote unprecedented collaboration among Missouri’s universities. Missouri’s public higher education institutions filed a joint application for the grant. In a nationwide, competitive grant process, the Missouri application was one of only 29 selected from a pool of 600.
“Missouri continues to lead the way in education reform that will boost achievement, preparing our students to compete for the best jobs in the global economy,” Gov. Nixon said. “Working in close collaboration to redesign courses and make the best use of innovative technology, our public four-year schools can serve tens of thousands of students more efficiently and effectively, reduce costs, and meet higher academic goals, including college completion.”
The course redesign initiative is a direct outgrowth of Gov. Nixon’s public agenda for higher education, announced in August 2010. The grant will enable the redesign of 13 high-enrollment undergraduate courses using innovative and technology-based learning tools to improve student learning, persistence and program completion, as well as reduce instructional costs. Each university will redesign one course that is common to all institutions and will be guided by the principles and practices of the National Center for Academic Transformation, a well-known national leader in course redesign.
Next Generation Learning Challenges is a collaborative, multi-year initiative created by the Gates and Hewlett foundations and others to address the barriers to educational innovation and tap the potential of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States.
"This grant recognizes that Missouri is making steady progress toward greater efficiency in higher education,” said Missouri Commissioner of Higher Education David Russell. “Course redesign, a priority of Governor Nixon, will result in improved remediation rates, better learning outcomes for students and higher completion rates for the state."
Gov. Nixon said the grant money will be supplemented by an additional $240,000 from Missouri’s public universities, $100,000 from the state, and $15,000 from the Missouri Department of Higher Education.
In addition to benefiting university students with redesigned courses, the public four-year universities also eventually will share their redesigned course materials with the 21 public two-year colleges in Missouri, which currently enroll more than 100,000 students.
“This funding will provide all of us with an opportunity to pursue an unprecedented level of collaboration on a broad academic agenda, with a laser focus on providing a quality education experience for students,” saidChrista Weisbrook, the faculty fellow at the University of Missouri System who is coordinating the initiative among Missouri’s higher education institutions.
The 13 public four-year institutions are: Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis; Lincoln University in Jefferson City; Missouri Southern State University in Joplin; Missouri State University in Springfield; the four campuses of the University of Missouri System; Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph; Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville; Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau; Truman State University in Kirksville; and University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.
The University of Missouri System is providing administrative grant support for the group’s work over the next 15 months.
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