Subsequent to his resignation from BRAC University, Prof. Islam has founded SoftEd and is continuing his previous work in distance education via the [[http://www.electronicgovernment.se/bvc/|Bangladesh Virtual Classroom]] project.
This project is being conducted in association with the [[http://www.bou.edu.bd/home.html|Bangladesh Open University]], with funding from [[http://www.spidercenter.org/|SPIDER]].

* The first pilot (also funded by SPIDER) consisted of 2 video lessons, that were presented to students using computers.
* The current project is aiming to build on that and record 26 lessons to be broadcast at a later date (5 sites with 60-90 students each). Lessons will not be presented live to students but will have a live feeling to them as they will show students and teachers interacting.

**Overall objectives of the project:** (from [[http://www.electronicgovernment.se/bvc/%29|http://www.electronicgovernment.se/bvc/)]]
The objective of the project is to make the interactive pedagogy tested during the “Bangladesh Virtual Classroom” project sustainable at Bangladesh Open
University.

**Project deliverables are:**
• The “Virtual classroom” as an established method of working at BOU, and as a universal transferable method. This includes interactive pedagogy as well as methods for production of interactive courses and for delivering these in an economically and technically viable fashion.
• Validated test results from large scale tests (estimated 30 000 students).

**Project code repository:**
http://code.google.com/p/bvc-softed/

It is Prof. Islam's opinion that SPIDER's interest stems in part from wishing to explore the possibility of deploying such a solution in Africa.