The Sloan-C View Newsletter

Sloan National Agenda for Industry-University
Online Learning Relationships

A. Frank Mayadas, Program Director, Sloan Foundation
Elaine Cacciarelli, Project Officer, Sloan Greater NYC Online Learning Center

It is widely acknowledged that corporations and universities have had many years of experience with online learning. The different paths that each have traveled in online development, however, confirm that no single delivery method has emerged for both. For the most part, online at corporations is principally self-paced learning, while universities have adopted asynchronous, instructor-led online delivery to student cohorts, known as asynchronous learning networks (ALN) in the Sloan-C community.

Quite clearly, better collaboration between these two separate worlds is a desirable goal. In relationships in which universities providing online delivery that meets corporate training goals, there is a need for corporate and academic groups to collaborate on identifying achievable, measurable learning outcomes that are acceptable to both.

Sloan Initiates Collaboration. On January 25, 2005, the Sloan Center at Stevens Institute of Technology conducted a Sloan-sponsored all-day national workshop in New York City as an initial step in bringing together corporate online learning executives and academic ALN experts.

The meeting considered what role academic ALN might play within the five primary corporate learning categories: (1) generic education programs, (2) industry-specific education and training, (3) generic training programs, (4) tool-specific programs, and (5) firm-specific training. Since universities and corporations have already established a successful record of collaboration in category 1 (generic education), we believe the other four categories also offer promise for newly formed partnerships.

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Workshop Activities and Outcome. The one-day event stimulated discussions on corporate education and training, areas of overlap between academic ALN and industry e-learning, mechanisms for exchange of ideas and practices, and potential channels for introducing academic ALN programs in corporations.

Experts Create Program: A panel of ten academic and corporate experts designed a hands-on agenda, opening with reports from corporate students about their extensive experience with university ALN and self-directed corporate training. In a second presentation, participants learned about the corporate-university ALN collaboration in telecommunications between Pace University and Verizon, as part of the National Coalition for Telecommunications Education and Learning project—an industry-wide tuition reimbursement program. Two core questions—how to measure program quality and how to structure potential collaborative projects— involved participants in lively afternoon breakout sessions.

Key Academic ALN and Corporate Learning Experts Offer Views: Nearly 80 experts participated, including learning executives from IBM, General Motors, Boeing, Liberty Mutual, Siemens, Viacom, Verizon, Bank of New York, Cendant (Century 21), and United Technologies. Senior administrators responsible for renowned ALN programs attended from Cornell, CUNY, SUNY, Georgia Tech, Kent State, Michigan State, NJIT, NYU, Pace, Penn State, Stanford, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of CA/Berkeley, University of IL, University of MA/Lowell, University of MD University College, University of MI, and University of PA.

Outcomes: What Might Happen Next
~Serious corporate interest. Nearly 30 high-level corporate-training executives from Fortune 500 companies with global perspective expressed substantial interest in pursuing collaboration.
~Create commonly based model to accelerate quality learning in both worlds. Attendees agreed to assess quality learning metrics and to collaborate on potential convergences between Sloan-C’s ALN pillars and Kirkpatrick’s 4-level

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