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A letter from the editors
of the Sloan-C View
This issue of the View focuses on some of the ways
online learning is changing how higher education achieves quality and
scale.
Expanding access to quality
higher education is the core of Sloan-C's mission,
writes John Sener , Sloan-C editor
for advancing the effective practices that enable
more people to learn, to evaluate program options,
and to obtain support services. In this issue,
see California State University-Chico's online
design guidelines and evaluations and Indiana University-Bloomington's
Repurposeable Learning Objects, replicable practices
that improve quality and save faculty time, while
making learning more accessible and affordable.
Greater access means scaling
educational programs to accommodate capacity enrollment
as unique institutional missions define it. In
a recent Sloan-C listserv discussion, Burks
Oakley, Ray Schroeder and Victor
Kobayashi note that scalability-even the controlled growth
of access-requires that operations that once worked
independently of each other now need to work much
more closely, cooperating to provide effective
access for more and different kinds of learners.
For example, Don
Spicer and Marci McClive,
as an administrator and as a professor, analyze
competing goals of affordability, reliability
and innovation in LMS selection.
Likewise, in a Sloan-C listserv
discussion of online learning’s effect on
the academy, Tom Abeles predicts
that: “Smart money seems to see virtual learning
moving rapidly to simulations or scenario building
along with games and a merging of the education/learning
with what has come to be known as Knowledge Management.” We
are in for real transformation says Abeles, as
the cybernative classes of 2005 approach.
In “Is Blending in
Your Future?” Jeff Seaman provides
data from 50 Sloan-C member schools. These schools,
pioneers in online delivery, expect that in 3 years,
more than a third of all students will be engaged
in blended courses as web-based pedagogies emerge
as common practice.
To inform a wider audience
about online learning's implications for Higher
Education, Tony Picciano will
arrange for presenters to help bring the Sloan-C
quality principles to national conferences.
The interdependent Sloan-C
quality principles emulate the well-known features
of continuous quality improvement (CQI), which
uses feedback from customers, partners and employees
to improve products and processes—continuously.
As applied to higher education, the CQI quality
goal is to scale programs to achieve capacity access
through attention to learning effectiveness, affordability
for learners and providers, and faculty and student
satisfaction. Sloan-C members demonstrate these
features of quality with empirical data as proof
of effective practice.
You are welcome to join Sloan-C
and to contribute your insights about scaling quality
education through greater access. Visit Sloan-C
soon and often.
Best Regards,
… for the Sloan Consortium
Frank Mayadas,
John Bourne and
Janet Moore
The purpose of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines.
You are welcome to join Sloan-C: http://www.sloan-c.org
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