• The award for Excellence in Online Learning Effectiveness will be presented to Dr. Boria Sax of Mercy College for creating and sharing the learning effective practice of encouraging peer-to-peer learning through course wizards.
• The award for Excellence in Online Cost Effectiveness will be presented to Dr. John T. Harwood and Dr. William L. Harkness of The Pennsylvania State University for creating and sharing the cost effective practice of course design that reduces lecture time and adds interactive learning.
• The award for Excellence in Online Access will be presented to Carol J. Scarafiotti and Dr. Patricia S. Case of Rio Salado College for creating and sharing the results of a system-wide approach to serving students in online learning programs.
• The award for Excellence in Online Faculty Satisfaction will be presented to the UniSCOPE Learning Community of the The Pennsylvania State University for creating and sharing a policy for acknowleding the full range of scholarly activities that university faculty perform.
• The award for Excellence in Student Satisfaction will be presented to Dr. David A. Sachs and Dr. Nancy L. Hale of Pace University for implementing and sharing an improvement system based on a continuous stream of student feedback to refine student services, pedagogy, and curriculum.

"It's very good for society that online learning has progressed so well, because it enables so many students, who would not otherwise have the opportunity, to access higher education.

Yet, to sustain this growth while ensuring that the quality of education continuously improves, institutions need to continue to experiment with innovations in online pedagogy, faculty development, and programs," says Frank Mayadas, program director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "We expect these awards to be one incentive for excellence; quality requires a lot more sharing, learning, and improving to ensure that online education is all that it can become."

The 2002 Sloan-C Awards will be presented at the 8th Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN): The Power of Online Learning: The Faculty Experience in Orlando, Florida, on November 8, 2002. The Sloan-C Awards Selection Committee for 2002 was comprised of James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus, University of Michigan; Judith S. Eaton, President, Council for Higher Education Accreditation; Zelema M. Harris, President, Parkland College; John V. Lombardi, Chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.; Joseph McDonald, President, Salish Kootenai College; Sidney A. McPhee, President, Middle Tennessee State University; and Linda M. Thor, President, Rio Salado College. A subcommittee of experienced online educators selected awardees for effective practices in the five Sloan-C Quality Pillars from nominees chosen by the Sloan-C Effective Practices Editors: Tana Bishop, University of Maryland University College; John Sener, Sloan-C consultant in private practice; Karen Swan, University at Albany; and Melody Thompson, of The Pennsylvania State University World Campus.

Call for participation in a national project to develop criteria for assessing online faculty coursework. The preliminary assessment instrument is now available for wider review and participation. Faculty wishing to review the rubric and/or pilot the instrument on their campuses may contact Dr. Joan McMahon at mcmahon@towson.edu or 410-704-3538.

"Alma Mater" Cont'd
Learning is not the sole domain of educational institutions; learning permeates everyday life. A function of the Information Revolution is that education has become less a preparation for life than it is a lifelong need. The Information Society is a Learning Society. The goals of both are reflected in the descriptions we regularly use as fundamental to learning: knowledge creation that is active, collaborative, problem-centered, inquiry-based, constructivist, and outcomes-oriented. Online programs are at the intersection of major changes in higher education, emphasizing a new commitment to serving all students with pedagogies suited to this learning society.

If we believe that learning theory principles will ultimately prevail over consumerism and that online education has the potential to offer much more than it does now, we ought to seek the opportunities to improve learning for upcoming generations. As a consortium, we need to consider how to build the learning-system-after-next, fully enabled with infrastructures to do things we couldn't do before. It will take enormous effort, time, and people networks to place old traditions and new technologies in the service of learning community.

The Sloan-C listserv includes diverse perspectives on this and other challenges facing higher education; as a member you can contribute your own view. Please join Sloan-C and take part. Membership is currently free at www.sloan-c.org.

The annual Sloan-C workshop on quality online education convened at Lake George, New York, from September 24 to September 27. Forty-two experienced online educators met to collaborate on studies of learning effectiveness, cost effectiveness, access, faculty satisfaction and student satisfaction, in preparation for Volume 4, the annual series of books in the Sloan-C Series. Volume 4 will include overviews of current and developing online practices from the perspectives of public, private, 2-year, 4-year colleges, research universities, state and regional systems, and policy makers. Workshop participants also plan to share their findings in a series of Sloan-C online workshops to be scheduled throughout 2003.