Published April 10. 2026 02:09AM<\/p>\n
Northampton Community College (NCC) has received a $10,000 grant from the PPL Foundation to support open-source education.<\/p>\n
NCC is advancing its commitment to affordable, accessible education through the development of Open Educational Resources, which is freely-available, openly-licensed teaching materials that can be adapted and shared.<\/p>\n
According to a March 18 NCC press release, NCC leaders believe that the cost of textbooks should never stand in the way of a student pursuing a career. The resources will allow students to access course materials at no cost while ensuring curriculum remains flexible, current and aligned with workforce needs, stated the press release.<\/p>\n
The initiative will begin with several pilot courses launching in the fall with a long-term plan to expand the model in the next three years.<\/p>\n
Leadership for the project includes Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Information Technology, Marshal Miller, and Executive Director of Innovation & Strategy, Dustin Briggs, who will guide the strategy, management and implementation of an Open Innovation Office at NCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy empowering faculty to create and adapt open educational resources, we are building an ecosystem that lowers cost to students, while keeping our curriculum innovative and relevant,\u201d said Miller.<\/p>\n
The PPL Foundation has provided the initial support necessary to move the project forward.<\/p>\n
NCC is awaiting review of a National Science Foundation grant proposal focused on STEM education. If awarded, the grant would support the development of open-source course content from start to finish for science and mathematics classes.<\/p>\n
The project would allow for re-design of 10 courses using open resources and expanded digital content.<\/p>\n
Open-resource content fosters collaborations between educators at various institutions.<\/p>\n
By sharing materials with other colleges and inviting contributions from educators nationwide, NCC aims to build an ecosystem that strengthens course quality and expands access to knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published April 10. 2026 02:09AM Northampton Community College (NCC) has received a $10,000 grant from the PPL Foundation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-162406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}