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

Looking ahead at ways asynchronous learning networks affect pedagogy and growth, this issue includes:

• In “A Tipping Point for Online Education?” Claudine SchWeber of the University of Maryland University College considers how national and institutional enrollment growth and transformed infrastructure impact leading online education systems.
• In "Hot off the Blog," Ray Schroeder of the University of Illinois at Springfield provides news of pedagogical approaches that emphasize connectivity: student success, interactivity, and non-linear learning.
• A forthcoming Sloan-C report on blended learning examines the reasons for blending and the barriers to blending. Be sure to join Sloan-C to be eligible to receive your free copy.
• In "How Can Online Pedagogy Be Better Than Face to Face?" a Sloan-C online research workshop invites participants to consider constructivism, collaboration and community. In this workshop, authors from the annual summer research workshop will interact synchronously and asynchronously with participants to explore effective ALN-enabled pedagogical practices that enhance the ways we learn. In addition to discussions and live chats, you’ll have early access to the studies and presentations from the annual Sloan invitational summer research workshop. Activities begin on Wednesday, March 2.

• In “Excerpts from ‘Online Engineering Education: Learning Anywhere, Anytime,’” you can get a glimpse of the impact of ALN on engineering education. If you are an engineering educator or just interested in engineering education, please join us in an online workshop Online Engineering Education: Learning Anywhere, Anytime discussion about online education in engineering.  Workshop activities during the week of March 21-25 will include review of a paper on online education published in the January issue of the Journal of Engineering Education, by John Bourne, Dale Harris and Frank Mayadas. In addition, we will have a set of distinguished panelists from MIT, Stanford, Florida, SUNY, GaTech, U. Washington to interact with you to help with online engineering education at your institution. 

In other news, University of Massachusetts—UMassOnline announces an online certificate program in Instructional Technology Design. Sloan-C welcomes the National Center on Accessible Distance Learning (ACCESSDL) to Sloan-C membership. The AccessDL site contains resources and links for distance learning administrators, educators, web designers and students about how to ensure that distance learning is accessible to students and instructors with disabilities. Resources include discussion lists as well as publications and streaming video for distance learning designers, instructors, trainers, webmasters and editors.