Promising Directions for Practice
Understanding the promise of online instruction done well—and the corresponding peril of poor substitutes—some institutions have implemented innovative practices to enhance faculty satisfaction:

• Institutional provision of comprehensive faculty support services. Some institutions are committing to high levels of centralized support for faculty who design for and/or teach in the online environment. This approach ensures equitable support and consistency of services.
• Peer review of courses and teaching. Initial faculty resistance to the institutional adoption of online initiatives has sometimes necessitated that administrators, rather than faculty, develop and implement quality standards for online programs. Recognizing both the need for such standards and legitimate faculty concerns related to oversight, some institutions are extending the traditional peer review process to online courses and programs.
• Institutional support of online projects. Faculty commitment and satisfaction are enhanced by institutional support for innovation. Some universities have implemented large-scale intra-institutional grant programs that signal institutional support not just for the idea of online learning, but, more importantly, support for their own faculty in the development and delivery high-quality online programs and resources.
• Revision of the institutional reward structure. Traditionally, institutional-rewards decisions have focused

on faculty members’ research scholarship. Some institutions are beginning to re-examine and expand their approach to more adequately reward scholarship related to teaching and service. Specifically, they are recognizing the possibilities and opportunities offered by new online environments and are developing guidelines for including scholarly work related to online programming in the faculty review process.

• Development of norms and best practices. To date, much of the information about the faculty experience in online teaching has been anecdotal and situation specific. Some institutions are implementing cross-institutional and/or cross-discipline studies of the faculty experience to identify commonalities, establish guidelines for practice, and provide the basis for informed planning and decision making.

"Improving Quality in Online Education"
A Sloan-C Preconference Workshop at the 8th Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN): The Power of Online Learning, The Faculty Experience

How do learners want to learn? How do teachers want to teach? Which practices are most effective for online learning? 

The Sloan-C workshop "Improving Quality in Online Education" examines answers to these

questions about learning effectiveness, faculty satisfaction and access. With facilitators and participants who are practitioners, this learning-by-doing workshop actively engages everyone in sharing knowledge to maximize student success.

The workshop begins by identifying the foremost barriers to success. Based on participants' feedback, the 5-hour workshop shows how schools have eliminated these barriers.

Working with a customized case study problem to solve in small group, round table interactions, participants use a quality framework of fully costed effective practices to determine the best ways to maximize student success.

Using the workshop template, groups draft proposals to share with the workshop and to adapt for use at their own institutions. Participants also take home a workbook that is a treasure trove of exemplars and resources.

Workshop facilitators include audience experts from an array of schools who lead the nation in designing programs to maximize student performance. In addition, Sloan-C experts share their insights and research on effective practices. Frank Mayadas, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Project Director and Sloan-C President, will provide opening remarks, and John Bourne, Director of the Sloan Center for OnLine Education (SCOLE), Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship at Babson College, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Olin College will facilitate workshop activities. Join Sloan-C in sharing your questions and your know-how with experts from across the nation in this performance based workshop.