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Order
Yours Today!
Elements
of Quality: The Sloan-C Framework
By
Janet C. Moore • $49.95
Educators have long sought
to define quality in learning. Today, the powerful reach
of online learning calls for proof of quality in all
we do, as the emerging Internet-driven economy makes
educational purpose more accessible and more visible
than it has ever been.
For a decade, the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation has guided and funded the Sloan Consortium
(Sloan-C) of colleges with online programs. These college
programs feature faculty-led, cohort-based, asynchronous
interaction, and produce at least the same quality of
learning that the originating institutions produce in
their face-to-face programs. Sloan-C hosts channels
for online educators to share knowledge about improving
performance in what have come to be known as the five
pillars of quality: learning effectiveness, cost effectiveness,
access, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction.
The recently published Elements
of Quality: The Sloan-C Framework is a reference
manual that draws from these channels. It illustrates
the effectiveness of the pillar model with research
from the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks,
the Sloan-C catalog, listserv, books, workshops and
conferences, and an online exchange of effective practices.
The framework uses the principles of continuous quality
improvement as tools for measuring progress toward the
goal of affordable, accessible education for all. |
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As
institutions make decisions about the best ways to improve
quality, the framework helps make comprehensible multiple,
simultaneous perspectives about value, priorities, gaps,
tradeoffs, capacity management, and more. Quality, as
defined by Sloan-C, is the dynamic, relational character
each institution creates according to its mission and
the people who embody it. The democratizing influence
of online communications means the framework itself
is a collaborative work in progress. Readers are welcome
to contribute to its refinement as pedagogy responds
to the new possibilities of information technology.
The Sloan-C framework is distinctive
because its simplicity serves as a heuristic, easily
memorable and readily adaptable to diverse institutional
missions. Elements of Quality provides replicable
examples of effective practices and strategies that
work. It tells the story of a paradigm in progress.
To order your copy, please
visit http://www.sloanc.org/
publications/books/prm.asp
or
call 781-292-2524.
Book Reviews
For complete reviews, please visit: http://www.sloan-c.org/
resources/reviews/index.asp
New Technologies in the
Social Sciences and Humanities
Jaishree Odin of the
University of Hawaii reviews Computing
in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Ed. Orville Vernon Burton. Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 2002.
Review in press at On the Horizon.
Does E-Moderating an Active Online Classroom Create?
Jaishree
Odin of the University of Hawaii reviews Gilly Salmon's E-tivities
The Key to Active Online Learning. London, Kogan Page, Ltd.,
2002. Review in press at On the Horizon.
A New Knowledge of Reality
Janet Moore of Olin
College reviews the National Research Council’s
report, Preparing for the Revolution: Information
Technology and the Future of the Research University.
National Academies of Sciences, November 2002. Review
in press at On the
Horizon. |
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New and Noteworthy in Effective
Practices
Bill Pelz at Herkimer
County Community College shares an effective practice that uses student-led discussions to build complex understandings of concepts in his psychology courses. Pelz bases the majority of course grades on these student-led discussions by using a grading system that rewards questions for being relevant, important, thought-provoking, original, and timely. His grading system also rewards answers for being correct, thorough, focused, well organized, well written, and original. Pelz's combining student empowerment with explicit criteria for creative thought leads to better learning of complex ideas, resulting in deeper and richer discussions, more engagement, and higher course retention rates.
Carol Hayes at Florida
State University shares Webstars and Star Strategies, FSU webpages that recognize faculty who innovate with learning technology-full of examples that are informative and motivational.
Visit http://www.sloan-c.org/
effective/index.asp to read about these replicable online practices and
to add your own. Submissions become eligible for
annual Sloan-C Quality Awards.
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