About ADEC (cont'd from page 4)
define academic/administrative barriers to design and delivery of distance education, develop criteria for how to charge distance education students per credit hour and review quality distance education criteria and assessment tools.

b. NSF AISEP project
The consortium has a grant of approximately $5 million from the National Science Foundation to research and experiment with advanced Internet-satellite technology using small-dish satellite technology to provide cheap, fast Internet connections for distance education. Many poor and remote communities in the United States that might benefit from distance education either have no Internet access or have access that is both costly and slow. The research will expand distance-education opportunities for students attending colleges in rural and remote areas, in tribal, historically black, and Hispanic colleges, and the communities these institutions serve.

c. Agricultural Telecommunications Grant Program
ADEC also administers grants for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the $350,000 - $500,000 range per year. ADEC reviews grant requests and awards funds based upon a proposal’s alignment with the terms of the grant and the central mission of the organization to promote distance education nationally and internationally.

d. Strategic Collaboratories
ADEC hosts “collaboratories” that are largely Internet based, interactive think tanks focused on issues related to distance education. The ADEC collaboratories are: The ADEC Think Tank, Technology R&D, Distance Education Policy, Professional Development/Capacity Building, and Peer-Refereed Educational Projects.

Visit ADEC at http://www.adec.edu

Digital Inclusion (cont'd from page 1)
These people have critical information and knowledge, and they reside in interesting places and spaces. A shift to video-based, synchronous learning networks to the in crowd is as risky as an inside the beltway view of life. If higher education sneaks back into the ivory tower, considering anything beyond campuses as “out of the loop,” it leaves the market and innovation space to others. This view cuts market potential and decreases innovation space—it excludes people from global learning opportunity at exactly the wrong time in the history of the universe.

Access, a fundamental Sloan C pillar, is complex and five dimensional, including physical, financial, cognitive, content and political access. Digital inequality too has at least five dimensions: equipment, autonomy of use (location of access), skill, social support and purposes for using the Internet.
“The Global Digital Divide.” Internet Policy Institute, Washington, DC, May 2000.

An ADEC-Sloan C combination is an unbeatable one—we are already joined in many ways at both the organizational and institutional levels. This new, clear commitment to work together can change the face of American education and global learning as we’ve known it.

New and Noteworthy in Effective Practices...
Faculty-staff-student partnerships support production of learning objects.
Atlantic Cape Community College funds student Digital Media Assistants to work up to 25 hours per week with faculty who commit to a one-hour per week paid

consultancy. The practice produces reusable and shareable learning objects for online courses across the curriculum.

Best Practices in e-Learning Online ShowCase
University of Calgary provides practitioners a Best Practices in e-Learning ShowCase as a convenient and effective way of sharing innovative approaches and getting feedback from peers. Calgary also provides an affordable annual Best Practices in e-Learning Online Conference as an excellent opportunity for practitioners in e-learning to meet, share and showcase their best practices with each other. Using the latest in e-learning technologies this is a truly World Wide conference without the prohibitive costs of travel.

Creating Skilled Lifelong Global Learners: Fairleigh Dickinson's Distance Learning Initiative
Fairleigh Dickinson University was the first traditional university to require all of its undergraduates to take online courses. FDU's added purpose was to bring students global perspectives by utilizing
globally-based faculty, and in the process to prepare global citizens who use the Internet as a lifelong learning tool. Anecdotal evidence and preliminary assessment data indicate that this pioneer program is achieving its goals and is a model for similar types of academically-driven and mission-related initiatives targeted primarily to current students, and secondarily as a leverage point for new external niche initiatives.

What effective practices do you or your institution have that others
would benefit from knowing about? Share what you do best by posting a brief summary. Click here to add an effective practice in one of the pillar areas.

You'd like to submit an effective practice but just can't find the time? Then just drop me an e-mail (john.sener@sloan-c.org) with a 1-3 sentence description of your EP and a link to relevant background documentation—URL(s), attached documents, published findings— I'll write up a description, send it to you for your review, then pass it on to the relevant editor for posting!

John Sener, Sloan-C Editor for Effective Practices in Access