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Issue
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Join the Sloan Consortium on Linkedin, Twitter & Facebook
Stay connected with The Sloan Consortium and its
members through the Sloan-C networking groups on Twitter and Linkedin.
Learn what others in online education are doing as well as receive news
and conference updates from the Sloan Consortium.
Linkedin: Click here to join the Sloan Consortium group.
Twitter: Click here to follow the Sloan Consortium.
Facebook: Click here to join the Sloan Consortium group.
Plaxo: Click here to join the Sloan Consortium group.
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New Publication - Moving the Lab Online: Situating the Online Laboratory Learning Experience for Future Success
Edited by:
Devon A. Cancilla, Ph.D., Western Washington University
Simon Albon, M.Sc., University of British Columbia
Moving the Lab Online is a collaboration from Sloan-C workshops that examines the current state of science education and explains how online labs are being introduced. It includes an exploratory case study of Western Washington University’s ILN Project, guidelines for the design of and pedagogy in online labs, and concludes with a look at the future of online labs.
If you would like to receive more information, please complete this short form so that we can notify you when this publication becomes available in 2010.
For more details, please visit www.sloanconsortium.org/book_moving_lab_online.
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An Overview of the 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning
In his keynote address to this year's conference, Frank Mayadas reviewed the history and status of online education and looked to the future:
The sharing of research, practices, knowledge of tools and infrastructure--once an option--is no longer that. It is now an imperative and the matter of sustaining and building and developing our community, increasingly will fall to a new generation—including many of you.
The 23% increase in conference attendance this year testifies that educators recognize the imperative. From 46 states and 7 countries, 1383 participants attended, including 173 virtual participants. An additional 215 people attended in the parallel 1st New England Regional Sloan-C Conference hosted by the University of Southern Maine, see article below. Attendance in all 3 venues exceeded expectations. The alternative venues that were added in consideration of travel restrictions also brought an exciting new dimension to the conference, as people used online social networks throughout the conference. Tweets and virtual Q&A rose during the provocative plenary from Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture) in which he challenged the ‘guide on the side’ role. Virtual conversations provided a fascinating many-to-many subtext to the experience of listening to what is usually a one-to-many address. The theme of networking as an imperative carried through the conference to Steve Laster’s concluding address which emphasized: "What I did yesterday isn’t good enough for tomorrow."
Follow Sloan-C on Twitter for tweets from the conference, including a link to John Sener’s and Melissa Venable’s reviews. You may also enjoy reviewing video clips
and slides. Look for this year's proceedings to be posted here.
Karen Swan, conference chair and University of Illinois Springfield James J. Stukel Distinguished Professor, said "The 15th Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning was very successful. We increased our attendance significantly from last year despite hard economic times and participants were very satisfied with the conference offerings. Keynote speaker, Frank Mayadas and plenary speaker, Andrew Keen were especially well received. Among other new things we tried, our satellite conference with the University of Southern Maine worked exceptionally well, and there were 972 separate live viewings of the 38 sessions we video streamed. Archived versions of the sessions continue to be accessed.”"
The Conference Steering Committee is looking forward to putting together an even better conference next year which will again be held at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, from November 3-5, 2010. Mark your calendars now!
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Coming Next Month – The Seventh Annual Sloan-C Survey on Online Learning
For the past six years, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has sponsored a national study of online learning in US Higher Education. Thousands of institutions have participated and the resulting reports have become the de facto standard for information about online attitudes and practices. The results both the substantial growth in online enrollments and the wide range of approaches that institutions of higher education have taken toward online instruction. In addition to the regular monitoring of the size of online enrollments, this year’s report will address such issues as:
- What is the impact of the current economic downturn on the demand for both face-to-face and online courses and programs?
- Is the current economic situation leading to increased budget pressure, and, if so, for what types of institutions?
- Do institutional H1N1 contingency plans include increased use of online classes to replace face-to-face?
- What types of training are provided for faculty teaching and/or developing online courses?
- How do campuses rank their support for online students, faculty incentives, technology, and policies on intellectual property?
Watch for the publication announcement. Like all previous reports in this series, the 2009 Sloan Online Survey report will be available as a free download from the Sloan Consortium web site.
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1st New England Regional Sloan-C Conference
Susan Nevins, Associate Director
Business and Management Programs
Center for Continuing Education
University of Southern Maine
On Friday, October 30, the final day of the 15th Sloan-C Conference in Orlando, the 1st New England Regional Sloan-C Conference was held in Portland, Maine. This inaugural event was the result of a partnership between Sloan-C, the University of Southern Maine, and University College of the UMaine System. The cornerstone of this project was a grant to the University of Southern Maine from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which included funding for a regional conference on online learning to serve as a pilot for future regional Sloan-C events. University College joined as the third partner, bringing their years of experience in producing an annual event (The Faculty Institute) for online educators in the University of Maine System.
The initial attendance goal for this first year, given the state of organizational travel budgets, was to break 100. We were delighted to sell out at 215. We attracted the attendees from the Faculty Institute who represented all eight campuses of the UMaine System. This despite the fact that the conference had been re-located to southern Maine, resulting in longer commutes for participants (six hours in some cases).
Every New England state (except Rhode Island) was represented. Slightly over 10% of attendees and 20% of presenters were from outside Maine. Presenters and participants from the region represented an interesting cross-section of higher education: large universities – Northeastern, Tufts, and UConn; teaching hospitals and institutions – Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy; and a number of smaller private colleges , e.g. Champlain and Rivier.
The conference offered 36 sessions distributed among the same tracks as the Sloan-C conference, with two coordinating sessions. We streamed "The Transforming Power of the Quality Matters Rubric and Process", part of the Sloan-C Virtual Conference. We also used video-conferencing to conduct our opening plenary session with two panelists from Orlando and two from Portland. Frank Mayadas, leader of Sloan’s transformative online initiative, and Ray Schoeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service (COLRS) at the University of Illinois Springfield anchored the panel from Orlando, while Selma Botman, president of the University of Southern Maine, and Bob Hansen, associate provost of Academic Outreach at USM, spoke from Maine. Their topic was "The Fast Pace of Online Learning in a Post-Recession Landscape." The audience contributed questions and comments from both locations.
We have work to do to critique and learn from this event, but the "buzz" seems to have reflected what we had hoped for when crafting the tagline for the conference, "Collaboration, Collegiality and Community among Online Educators."
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The Sloan Consortium & CREAD Offer Workshops in Spanish
The Sloan Consortium and CREAD, an inter-American non-profit distance education consortium, based at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in South Florida, have established a partnership that will allow both organizations to offer some of the Sloan-C online workshops to professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean. These workshops will be offered in Spanish and they will be adapted accordingly to meet the needs of the participants. The workshops will be offered in Portuguese at a later date.
To see a listing of offered workshops, click here.
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Learn From the Experts - The Sloan-C 2009 Workshop Series
2010 schedule now available.
Intermediate Second Life for Educators (SL workshop Level 2) - Dec 2 - 11
This workshop will introduce intermediate users of Second Life to various teaching tools useful to educators. This workshop is for the practitioner who is interested in developing skills to support pedagogy. Beginning Second Life for Educators is a prerequisite for this course.
Click here for details and
registration.
Academic Integrity in Online Edcuation - Dec 2 - 11
The role of technology in academic dishonesty is in the news, and federal legislation is pending that will require authentication of online learners. This session will provide information, examples, and a reality check for staff and faculty working in online education.
Click here for details and
registration.
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The
Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), sponsored
by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is composed
of institutions and organizations dedicated to continually improving the
quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their
own distinctive missions, so that education becomes a part of everyday
life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a
wide variety of disciplines.
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