... From the Editors
A letter from the editors of the Sloan-C View

This issue reviews some projects and initiatives that show progress towards the Sloan-C goal of scale—access to higher education for more learners and more kinds of learners.

In Hot Off the Blog, Ray Schroeder looks at the expanding online enrollments around the world and for new populations in the U.S. Elaine Cacciarelli, Executive Director of the Sloan Greater NYC Online Learning Center at the Stevens Institute of Technology reports on a collaboration of smaller to mid-sized colleges and universities, designed to increase access in the New York City metropolitan area. Jarl Jonas, Director for Online and Corporate Learning Development at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, invites readers to bring online programs to employees of the Fire Department of New York. George Lorenzo, Editor of Educational Pathways, describes the robust (collaborative rather than competitive) growth of online education in Canada. John Sener, of Sener Learning Services, shares recent effective practices and invites you to contribute your own practices to the Sloan-C online collection.

In 10 in 10, an Opportunity column, the Sloan-C Listserv discusses Frank Mayadas’s question about a tenfold increase in ALN within the next ten years. Will advances enable 20 million learners to experience asynchronous learning networks in higher education in 2014? Cultural and economic change, innovations in technology and accessibility, preK-16 educational partnerships, access for new kinds of learners—all these are promising effects of internet communications and asynchronous learning networks. Is a tenfold increase possible? We’d like to hear your answers to questions about this continuing Sloan-C focus, to be reported in forthcoming Opportunity columns--

• What will be the characteristics of the new learners? What will they need and want?
• What will learners pay? How will online learning become affordable for providers and users?
• What resources are needed? Where will the resources come from?
• Who will lead expanding access and who will be the winners?

Sloan-C is forming special interest groups (SIGs) to examine issues in depth and to publicize the results of their findings to help advance quality, scale and breadth in higher education. Sloan-C seeks your input about SIGs as a way to do better collectively what we currently do individually, and invites you to attend its pre-conference workshop, Building the Sloan-C Communities of Inquiry on Friday, November 12 from 1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. and the ALN 2004 Interest Roundtables on Saturday, November 13, 4:15 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Both events occur at the Annual Sloan-C Conference.

Sharing effective practices to answer challenges about improving interaction, learning effectiveness, blended environments and assessment is the focus of the Summer School version of the Online Research Workshop. Preliminary activities for the workshop began July 26 and discussions begin August 9, 2004. The work of participants in the first Online Research Workshop in Spring 2004 produced a wealth of practical knowledge that Sloan-C synthesized as a legacy for the people in the current workshop. People from 303 different schools in 43 different U.S. states and 18 different countries—Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Malaysia, Peru, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, the West Indies, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have joined these workshops to exchange interests and knowledge.

These online workshops provide a natural springboard to greater