...from the Editors
A letter from the editors of the Sloan-C View

"Start with the big ideas, and content will follow," says Randy Garrison of the University of Calgary, acknowledging that online communication offers unique opportunities for "reflective inquiry, self-direction and metacognition." Blending is the big idea of this issue of Sloan-C View. Blending courses, blending resources, blending perspectives, blending knowledge. Visit the new Sloan-C website and log in to see the former ALN sites blended as a fully (Google™) searchable knowledge center including the Catalog, current research and publications, effective practices, seminars and more.

In this issue, Richard Voos provides an overview of online education’s effect on face-to-face teaching, enabling learning in multiple modes, blended according to teaching and learning styles, subject matter and preference. In fact, as the National Research Council reports in Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research Universities, we are at the beginning of a change in learning systems that may blend formerly discrete sectors of the economy—business, entertainment, and information services. The Council calls for greater study and dialogue among the nation’s educators to share resources for learning with communications technologies that are expected “to increase in power a hundredfold each decade.”

Sloan-C enables blending across institutions, academic roles, and disciplines through the sharing of effective practices that can work in a wide range of settings. Annual summer workshops like the one quoted above at which Randy Garrison presented his insights about the unique ability of asynchronous learning to foster higher order thinking produce studies from a wide range of institutional contexts. Another Sloan-C channel is the listserv where people regularly share challenges and solutions. Likewise, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks provides insightful contributions to the Sloan-C knowledge base, like the ones in the current issue that study social presence, gender, culture, and evaluation, see details on page 8 of this issue.

The annual Sloan summer workshop enables authors to share and publish research in the Sloan-C quality series of books. When the Sloan-C effective practices editors presented workshop results in November at the 8th International Conference in Orlando, audience response was enthusiastic. For example, a professor said upon hearing Karen Swan talk on learning effectiveness, "I want a copy of your paper now!" Responding to demand, beginning in 2003, editors invite you to blend your knowledge with them and other practitioners in an online seminar series. See details on page 7 of this issue.

Jeff Seaman provides some preliminary results of a national survey that he is developing with feedback from Sloan-C members. He identifies trends in online learning, including an astounding growth rate around 40% per year in online enrollments.

In the fledgling years of the learning revolution, for nearly a decade, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has generously supported and guided Sloan-C’s leadership. Later, Sloan-C may start moving to a sustainable model that will include formal memberships. Your thoughts about how Sloan-C can best become a trusted provider of knowledge networks are most welcome. Please register and login to view resources at http://www.sloan-c.org.

Best regards,

For the Sloan Consortium

Frank Mayadas
John Bourne
Janet Moore