Simmons College will soon add new blended learning classes to their programs, thanks to a substantial grant. The Boston Globe reports:

"There is a growing academic question in the electronic age: How can one maintain the "college experience" in this time of online courses? Notably, how do small colleges, often known for their close teacher-student interaction, maintain that bond in the age of virtual classrooms?
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It's a question that Simmons College is trying to answer, with the help of a $225,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The goal, called blended learning, is to use technology to enhance the classroom experience and student-teacher interaction rather than replace it."

The grant money will be used to add online classes to Simmons' doctoral nursing program. It will also create distance learning courses to help students from multiple campuses learn from the the same library and information science instructors.