American Public University System (APUS) is the recipient of the 2009 Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education for implementing a data-driven approach to creating a culture of excellence and values in online education. The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) presents this award annually to the institution demonstrating commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs. APUS is the first 100% online institution (and first online, for-profit University) to achieve this distinction. Previous recipients of this flagship award are the University of Central Florida and University of Illinois at Springfield.

Award Overview

Sloan-C is an organization of more than 1,800 universities, colleges, and institutions committed to advancing best practices in online learning and expanding the quality of online higher education. The Ralph E. Gomory Award is based upon application of Sloan-C's five quality pillars that exemplify best practices in online education:

Access

Learning Effectiveness

Scale

Student Satisfaction

Faculty Satisfaction

Since 2002, Sloan-C has presented awards to recognize outstanding effective practices in each of the pillar areas. This year, in addition to APUS receiving the Gomory Award, Dr. Phil Ice, Director of Course Design, Research & Development at APUS, is the recipient of Sloan-C's Effective Practice Award for using the Community of Inquiry Framework Survey for Multi-Level Institutional Evaluation and Continuous Quality Improvement. APUS embraces the Community of Inquiry Framework survey as an end of course survey to measure student engagement and learning. The survey is available for download at: www.communitiesofinquiry.com.