Press Release

Sloan-C Honors Effective Practices in Online Learning

Needham, MA -- The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), an association of more than 1,000 institutions and organizations of higher education engaged in online learning, will present its 2005 awards at the 11 th Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning: The Power of Online Learning, Mobilizing to Expand Community, in Orlando, Florida, November 17, 2005.

Online learning has greatly progressed since 1992 when the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation began giving grants to institutions for online learning initiatives. “Quality online education continues to show vigor and strength. Every year we see advances in the important matters of quality, scale and breadth within this still fledgling community” says Frank Mayadas, President of Sloan-C. "The individuals and institutions honored this year are as before, exceptional, and we honor them for demonstrating exceptional leadership in advancing online education along these dimensions."

The 2005 Sloan-C Award for Effective Practice will be presented to Mercy College ( New York) for its practice of using cohorts to build online learning community.

In the Mercy College Masters of Science in Organizational Leadership (MSOL) program, each student is placed in a cohort, and all students in every cohort, are assigned the same faculty mentor, who supports, guides and instructs students in developing leadership skills. Since the cohort structure is the same online and on campus, students in both venues can collaborate with each other. Any student in a campus cohort who is faced with a change in work schedule that makes it impossible to continue to attend a campus program can seamlessly transfer to an online cohort. Because the students all have had the same learning and developmental experiences in their on campus and online courses, they can easily relate to each other. For corporate cohorts, the curriculum is further customized to ensure a direct correlation between organizational initiatives and student learning. Through team-based, transformational learning experiences, the MSOL program provides students with opportunities to apply their learning to dynamic, real-time situations in their organizations. Details are available at Sloan-C’s effective practices collection at http://www.sloan-c.org/effective/details3.asp?LE_ID=63.

The 2005 Sloan-C Awards will be presented at the 11 th Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida, on November 17, 2005. Nominees for Effective Practices Awards were made by the Sloan-C editors for effective practices: Dr. Tana Bishop of the University of Maryland University College, Dr. Melody Thompson of The Pennsylvania State University World Campus, Mr. John Sener of Sener Learning Services, Dr. Peter Shea of the University at Albany; and Dr. Karen Swan of Kent State University. Awardees were selected by an invited panel of judges: Dr. John Olin Campbell of Brigham Young University; Dr. Bruce Chaloux, Southern Regional Education Board; Dr. Mary Niemiec of the University of Illinois, Chicago; Dr. George Otte, City University of New York; and Ms. Carol Scarafiotti, Rio Salado College. Details about the awards are available at http://www.sloan-c.org/aboutus/awards.asp.

The purpose of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is to help learning organizations continually improve the quality, scale and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions. The ultimate goal is to make education a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. Created with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C encourages the collaborative sharing of knowledge and effective practices. Membership is open to academic institutions, government and corporate agencies, and organizations that support quality in higher education.

Contact: Janet C. Moore
Chief Learning Officer
The Sloan Consortium
401-632-0707
janet.c.moore@sloan-c.org