Congratulations to Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) for winning a $50,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which it will run on CourseSites, a free, cloud-based online learning platform that provides the latest and greatest Blackboard technology. Cuyahoga Community College, a Blackboard Learn^TM client, will use the grant money to create an open course on developmental math.

“We’re very excited to utilize Blackboard’s CourseSites for our MOOC. We have a longstanding relationship with Blackboard and appreciated the opportunity to work on an emerging new educational delivery format (MOOC) application to support one of the College’s core learning needs: developmental education. The use of a MOOC to enhance success with students in developmental education is an excellent opportunity to support innovation with core learning initiatives,” said Christina Royal, associate vice president of eLearning and innovation at Tri-C.

Tri-C is joining a growing list of institutions that are using CourseSites to run MOOCs for reasons including familiarity with the Blackboard system, the breadth of features and functionality, and the ability to create courses based on their own vision instead of adapting to a vendor’s model.