Military Leadership, Faculty Practices, and Cultural Perspectives in Online Education, JALN 15.3
The latest issue of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) scholarly periodical, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, (JALN Volume 15 Issue 3)—with Guest Editors Deb Gearhart of Troy State University, Philip A. McNair of the American Public University System, and Kathleen Schulin of National Defense University—provides insights for practitioners who want to know how online education can facilitate leadership training, ease faculty workload while increasing student performance, and better accommodate cultural nuances in online education.
In “Leader Challenge: What Would You Do?” Chris Miller and Nate Self of the Praevius Group, Sena Garven of the U.S. Army Research Institute, and Nate Allen of the U.S. Army Office of Business Transformation show how the Simulated Cognitive Leadership Challenge, a platform where Soldiers can construct collaborative solutions to various scenarios presented to them by their peers and/or predecessors, has enabled more than 32,000 participants to explore multi-modal, distributed, asynchronous education for troops deployed in a combat environment.
Collaborative teamwork is a natural boon of online education, yet assessing individual contributions is a challenge for faculty and team members. In “Assessment of Individual Student Performance in Online Team Projects,” Jay Alden of National Defense University compares the pros and cons of various assessment methods in face-to-face and online classes and finds the Faculty Review process is preferred for online classes. In “How Online Faculty Improve Student Learning Productivity ,” Katrina A. Meyer and Larry McNeal of the University of Memphis identify six principles for increasing student performance. Matthew Elbeck of Troy University, Dothan and Minjung Song explain how to save faculty time and effort while increasing student satisfaction in “Improving Instructor Response to Student Emails Using Template and Reminder Interventions .”
In “Cross-Cultural Differences in Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Online Barriers,” Larisa Olesova of Purdue University, Dazhi Yang of Boise State University, and Jennifer C. Richardson of Purdue University identify implications for instructors and designers who create asynchronous environments for students in multiple locations and diverse cultural backgrounds. In “Teacher Professional Development in the Amazon Region: Strategies to Create Successful Learning Communities ,” Lucio Teles and Laura Maria Coutinho of the University of Brazil provide rare and welcome glimpse into a highly successful teacher education program that created learning communities to bridge schools, regions and ethnic groups so that participants feel connected despite distance, cultural diversity, language, and religion.
From the perspectives of the individual classroom to institutional, cross-institutional and global perspectives, this issue shows—not only unique advances in online education—but also how sharing discoveries leads to new advances across the country and the globe.
About JALN
Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), published by the Sloan Consortium, is a major source of knowledge about online education. The aim of the JALN is to describe original work in synchronous learning networks (ALN), including experimental results. For more information about online and printed issues, please visit http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln_main. Tweet about it, http://bit.ly/kWJyYe.
About Sloan-C
The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is an institutional and professional leadership organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education, helping institutions and individual educators improve the quality, scale, and breadth of education.
