By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Two major education software players–Blackboard and K12–have announced plans to jointly develop a learning platform specifically targeting students taking remedial courses. Under the agreement, the project will deliver K12’s adaptive courses through Blackboard Learn. K12’s curriculum, which currently caters to K-12 students, uses interactive demonstrations and animations, CDs and videos, printed books with lots of illustrations, hands-on materials for experiments, online discussions, and assessments to test mastery of a subject. Remediation is more the norm than the exception in community colleges. According to research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is investing its philanthropic muscle in this area, up to 60 percent of students enrolling in community colleges must take at least one remedial course. Although schools are investing about $2 billion a year in remediation, only about one in four students who take these courses actually go on to earn a degree within eight years of enrolling.
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