Calif. Nonprofit Group Building National Bank of E-Learning Courses

A nonprofit group announced last week that it plans to build a repository of online courses for high school and college that it will make available to individuals, schools, and states at a significantly lower cost than for similar courses bought commercially, and in some cases for free.

The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, located in Santa Cruz, Calif., is creating the repository to promote sharing of courses that have been developed by researchers and educational institutions but that, so far, have been distributed only to a limited audience, said Gary Lopez, the executive director of the institute.

The courses offered initially will be in core subjects that students generally take in the final two years of high school and the first two years of college, including high school honors...