Dear Educator:

Please take a moment to review this month's Sloan-C NOW, a digest of events, information and notices of importance you won't want to miss.

Sloan-C Webinars

This year, Sloan-C has added webinars to its resources for educators. Webinars typically last anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half. Most are free to Individual Members. Institutional members and non members pay a separate fee. New webinars will be added soon. Check the webinar site frequently.

Attend the Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning Virtually! - October 26th 2:00 - 3:30 ET

Are you unable to travel to Florida to attend the 16th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning? No problem! You can attend virtually – right from your computer. Join us for this free webinar to learn about the virtual conference option and how you can be part of this event by attending live streamed sessions and networking with other attendees in our social networking site. You can even enter the social networking contests and win great prizes. Don’t miss out. Come find out more about this convenient, cost-effective option for the conference.

Success Strategies for Online Students - October 27th 2:00 - 3:30 ET

Students have a variety of unique issues they face in the online environment. Many are either too intimidated to ask, or are unaware of what to ask instructors about how to be successful. This webinar will address how students and online professors can both benefit from guidance provided in the online classroom.

Increasing Feedback & Decreasing Workload - November 2nd 2:00 - 3:30 ET

In this webinar, we’ll discuss the practical concerns of how to provide effective feedback. We’ll demonstrate some technologies you can use to deliver feedback, and we will also discuss how to do this while keeping in mind student privacy concerns.

Instructional Audio & Video: Strategies, Tips, and Considerations - November 9th 2:00 - 3:30 ET

In this webinar, you will learn about easy-to-use technologies to create the audio and video, instructional design strategies for making the audio and video educationally effective, and copyright and accessibility issues just to name a few.

For more information or to register, please go to the webinar page.

View recordings of previous webinars.

Student Authentication, Academic Integrity, and the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008

Compass Knowledge Group

At Compass we hear a great deal of concern coming from our partner community about the new regulations enacted as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) regarding authenticating the identity of online students. Rumors abound about what this means for institutions with respect to cost and accreditation. At the heart of this issue is really the age-old question of academic integrity. "How do we prevent online students from cheating?" is a frequent question we hear from faculty who are new to online learning. In this article we will dispel the myths and misinformation surrounding the language in the HEOA regarding student identification. We will also address the question of how faculty can minimize the opportunity for online students to cheat.

Student Authentication

The HEOA legislation, as it currently stands, requires institutions that offer courses or programs through distance education to have processes in place that verify or authenticate that the student who registers in such a course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the course or program and who receives the academic credit.

Some of the initial rumors surrounding the bill suggested that institutions of higher learning may be required to adopt sophisticated and perhaps expensive technology that would serve as a bridge to verify online students as the "real" students enrolled in online courses. However, this is not the case. The HEOA simply requires institutions that offer distance education to have security mechanisms in place, such as identification numbers or other pass code information to be used each time the student participates in coursework online. This includes methods such as:

• A secure login and pass code (as through the Course Management System);
• Proctored examinations;
• New or other technologies and practices which are effective in verifying student identification.

Most learning management systems are password protected, and are thus in compliance with the HEOA. In addition, the HEOA legislation makes it clear that any authentication policy must protect student privacy and it must notify students at registration or enrollment of projected additional charges for identify verification.

So, how does this impact accreditation? Belle Wheelen, Chair of the Council of Regional Accrediting Commission, posted the following information on the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET) website earlier this year:

Accreditors are required to ensure that institutions use, at minimum, a secure login and pass code or proctored exam and, as they become available and widely accepted, new identification technologies and practices. Additionally, whatever strategies of authentication are used must protect student privacy, and institutions must notify students, before they enroll, of any additional costs that they might incur because of this verification.

In addition, Fred Lokken, Chair of the Instructional Technology Council and Russ Poulin, Associate Director of WCET, in a Magna Publications Online Seminar conducted on April 15, 2010, stated that:

They [accrediting agencies] do not have specific requirements in those areas, but they are interested in trying to find out that campuses have something in place and that they are working on it. The feeling is that presently, the regional accrediting agencies are not planning on making this a huge issue in terms of their accrediting visits coming up. But it is still a requirement that they have to report back through the DOE. The feeling is that right now, accrediting agencies are kind of in an exploration and fact finding mode at this point of time.

In summary:

• Institutions that offer online courses to students are presently in compliance with the HEOA if they have, at a minimum, a pass code/password system in place as means to authenticate students, or proctored exams, or technologies and practices which are effective in verifying student identification.
• As new identification technologies are developed and become more sophisticated, less expensive and more mainstream, accrediting agencies or associations and institutions will consider their use in the future and we can assume that institutions will be adopting these measures accordingly.
• Institutions must protect student privacy as part of the authentication process and if there are extra fees associated with this as part of the online course, students need to be made aware of this prior to enrollment.

Read the rest of the article here.

Going Hybrid with the Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning

R.T. Brown
Director of Information Technology Services, The Sloan Consortium

Erica St. Angel
Vice President, Sonic Foundry

Last year Sloan-C hosted the 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, October 28-30, 2009, and for the first time for this event, offered a Virtual Conference option. The virtual pass included 18 sessions streamed live via Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite platform, including the audio, video and presentation slides from the keynote address, plenary speaker, closing session, 6 Best-in-Track sessions and 11 featured sessions with a simultaneous event with a Sloan-C Regional Conference hosted by the University of Southern Maine and presentation by Martin Dougiamas, the creator and lead developer of Moodle. Moderators, at the event, field questions from the virtual audience to relay back to the presenters. Here's a sample of one of the sessions.

Given the success of that first year offering an online option, Sloan-C decided to again make its flagship conference a hybrid event. Over 1,000 people attended the 2009 conference, including 175 virtual attendees - even though this was the inaugural year for the Virtual Conference. That boost from virtual attendees lead to a 20% overall increase in conference attendance – quite an achievement in a year when budget, travel bans and the flu are limiting professional development opportunities.

The move to make ALN a blended event began in 2008 when Sloan-C piloted conference webcasting with Mediasite by Sonic Foundry at its 2008 International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning in Carefree, Arizona. The online presentation catalog is still publicly-available and features fourteen presentations including the keynote address "Leadership Perspective" by Linda Thor, President of Rio Salado College, and Sam Smith, President Emeritus, Washington State University, and "Education = Communication: Understanding how technology changes the ways we communicate and the ways we teach" by Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins.

Sloan-C then conducted a brief survey to gauge member interest in streaming sessions at ALN. In keeping with its mission to make quality online education a part of everyday life, Sloan-C sought to broaden access to the valuable information presented at this annual event.

Results from the August 2008 survey revealed overwhelming support for webcasting, with 95 percent of respondents expressing interest in having access to the archived sessions, and over half stating they not only would attend the conference, but also sign up to watch the streaming presentations at a later time.

Feedback received from the 2009 virtual participants helped hone the online experience at both the 2010 Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Symposium and 16th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning which kicks off again in Orlando, November 3-5, 2010.

You can get an overview of the virtual pass offering by participating in our October 26 webinar, "Attend the Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning Virtually!" Registration is open for both onsite and online attendance.

*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.

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Sloan-C Membership - More Benefits, Same Price

Join the Sloan-C community. In 2010 Sloan-C instituted many new member benefits and options based on input from our members and friends. We made membership rolling (no longer based on a calendar year) and added free webinars, practitioner documents and new membership types, with no increase in rates. Membership includes full web access to effective practices, the JALN, free webinars, practitioner docs, discounts on workshops, conferences and much more.

Click here for more details.