Lumen Learning has been selected to receive funding as part of the Next Generation Courseware Challenge, a $20 million grant competition from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build exemplary, affordable digital course materials that improve student success among low-income and disadvantaged learners. Inspired in part by the groundbreaking work of Benjamin Bloom, Lumen’s courseware will apply educational strategies that show promise for improving learning outcomes: personal learning pathways for developing subject mastery; personalized teaching; and effective use of open educational resources. The result will be “next generation” courseware for four introductory-level college courses that enroll millions of students every year: Introduction to Business; Principles of Marketing; Microeconomics; and Macroeconomics.
The Floe team is excited to be a partner in this project. Floe will design the courseware’s universally accessible user experience through a highly iterative, inclusive and learner-centric process. The courseware developed through this grant will pioneer a new model for digital courseware and delivery tailored to the needs of disadvantaged students.