Community College: Special Issue of JALN
Mark Milliron, President and CEO of League for Innovation in the Community College, and Mary Prentice of New Mexico State University are guest editors in the latest JALN, and provide an opening article, "Ten Emerging Insights." Milliron and Prentice note that "the more than 1,100 U.S. community colleges have evolved into dynamic, comprehensive institutions" often "known for their resourcefulness in using any available tool or technique to improve and expand learning." Combining findings from the ongoing major trends study conducted every three years by the League for Innovation with the articles in this issue, they provide ten emerging insights. Contributing authors to this issue include: Carol Twig, Linda Thor and Carol Scarafiotti, William Graves, Steve Gilbert, Richard Rhodes, Barbara Walker, Stella Perez, Paul Gandel and Richard Katz.

See next month’s issue of the View, for a spotlight on the League for Innovation.

Roadmap to Redesign (R2R) Application Guidelines Now Available
Application guidelines for institutions interested in joining the Roadmap to Redesign (R2R) are now available on the Center for Academic Transformation’s web site at http://www.center.
rpi.edu/R2R/R2R.html. Follow the "Information for Applicants" link to view the guidelines, FAQs about R2R, a set of readiness criteria that will be used to pre-qualify prospective applicants, and a full program description. Applications are due on April 1, 2004.

R2R will build on the successes achieved in the Center’s Program in Course Redesign where 30 institutions redesigned large-enrollment, introductory courses using technology and achieved the following outcomes: improved student learning, increased student retention and reduced instructional costs. The Center now plans to teach other institutions how to achieve the same results.

The Center has created a new model—the academic practice—that will partner experienced, successful institutions with new institutions and rely upon best practices and learning materials with a proven track record in particular disciplines. Four academic areas have been selected to test the practice model: precalculus mathematics, psychology, Spanish and statistics. (See http://www.center.rpi.edu/
R2R/R2R_AP.html for more details about the academic practices.) Each practice will create a repository of research-based learning materials to be used by other institutions in redesign. Five additional institutional teams will be invited to join each practice and to complete a large-scale redesign using a streamlined redesign methodology.

The complexity of the redesign process used in the Program in Course Redesign will be simplified. A menu of redesign options—those techniques and models that are most likely to lead to learning improvements and cost reduction—will be available to new institutions. As they develop redesign plans, new institutions will be supported through workshops, access to streamlined tools and techniques, and through consultations with experienced, successful institutions and with Center staff.

To add your name to the Center’s list serve, which ensures that you will receive updates and information about this new initiative, send a plain text email message (with subject line left blank) to listproc@lists.rpi.edu. In the body of the message, type SUBLFORUM-L your name.

Mark Your Calendars
The 10th Sloan-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks
November 12-14, 2004 at the Rosen Centre, Orlando, Florida
The lessons learned at the 9th Sloan-C ALN Conference are probably still setting in. However, we are putting together an even more informative, more cutting edge conference for our 10th year anniversary to be held in the same location, the Rosen Centre in Orlando, Florida on November 12-14, 2004. The 2003 conference was a great success and we have many of you to thank for that! We have also listened to your feedback and plan to continue to increase the usefulness of the conference to you and your colleagues. Stay tuned for more announcements about conference presentations, registration, and pricing. In the meantime, refer to the following URL for updates and information: http://www.sloan-c.org/conference/
con04sfeb.asp