Note: For the Call for Nominations for the 2009 Sloan-C Awards for Excellence in Online Teaching and Learning, go here.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

The Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education will be presented by the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) to an institution that has demonstrated its commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs through quantitative application of the Sloan-C Quality Pillars. The five interdependent pillars, upon which quality online education is based, are:

• Access
• Learning Effectiveness
• Scale
• Student Satisfaction
• Faculty Satisfaction

The Sloan-C Quality Pillars parallel the familiar principles of continuous quality improvement, in which quantitative metrics are used to improve products and processes. For more information about the Sloan-C Pillars, see: http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/books/qualityframework.pdf

Since 2002, Sloan-C has presented annual awards to recognize outstanding effective practices in each of the pillar areas. The Gomory Award for Quality Online Education will be presented to an institution that best demonstrates, in a quantitative manner, its commitment to continuous improvement of the quality of its online programs using the Sloan-C Pillars. The award will be based upon the innovative nature of the quantitative metrics being used to assess quality, as well as the demonstration of continuous quality improvement based upon these metrics.

Institutions may apply for the Gomory Award based upon a single degree program, a cluster of such programs within a department or a school, or the online degree offerings for the entire institution. However, each institution will be limited to a single application.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Deadline for Nominations: 15 August 2009

Nominations will be submitted online using a form on the Sloan-C website; CLOSED.

The Awards Selection Committee of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) invites nominations for the 2009 Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education. The 2009 Gomory Award will be presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida, on October 29, 2009. This award consists of a commemorative plaque and a check for $5000. The monetary award is to be used by the recipient institution to fund “Sloan-C Gomory Scholarships” to students enrolled in its online programs.

Nominations must include (1) an overall summary of the institution’s online program, with an emphasis on quantitative metrics used to measure program quality, (2) a detailed description of the how the institution is using quantitative data in each of the five pillar areas to assess and to improve the quality of its online teaching and learning programs, (3) a proposed award citation, and (4) up to five letters of support, including letters from at least one student, one faculty member, and one administrator.

For additional information, please contact:

Prof. Burks Oakley II
Chair, Sloan-C Awards Selection Committee
E-mail: burks.oakley@sloanconsortium.org

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About Ralph E. Gomory

Ralph E. Gomory became the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1989 after a long and distinguished career at IBM. During his tenure as President, he led the Sloan Foundation into numerous fields relevant to major national issues. The Foundation supported pioneering work in the field of online learning before there was even a public Internet, and then supported its growth so that by 2009, more than 3.9 million people were enrolled annually in online courses in higher education in the United States. He was instrumental in the conception of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). In December 2007, Gomory became President Emeritus of the Sloan Foundation. More information about Dr. Gomory is available at: http://www.sloan.org/bio/item/11