On-Line Education : Learning Effectiveness and Faculty...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
• Published by: Center for Asynchronous Learning Networks June 1, 2000
• ISBN 10 Number: 0967777410
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0967777412
• Book Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 2.3 pounds

Book Description
An anthology of Sloan Foundation funded case studies on learning effectiveness and faculty satisfaction in on-line education at an array of universities and colleges.

Publisher Description
So much polemic has accompanied the evolution of higher education on-line, it's useful for a change to hear directly from the practitioners. Now from pioneer colleges and universities to implement full degree programs on-line comes On-Line Education: Learning Effectiveness and Faculty Satisfaction. 14 case studies examine critical issues involved in on-line education-- how well people learn and how satisfied faculty are.

The collection is remarkable for its scope and its specificity. 52 colleagues from institutions of higher learning contribute to the book. The schools-- Drexel, Michigan State, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Northern Virginia Community College, the Open University of Israel, Pennsylvania State, Seton Hall, SUNY, Taiwan Tamking University,University of California-Berkeley, University of Central Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin-Stout, and Vanderbilt University-- range from community colleges, regional campuses, major urban universities, to land-grant and statewide systems. The book records how they transformed in-class pedagogies to on-line ones to achieve the same or better outcomes.

That collaboration occurs in such a distributed group is a benefit of on-line communication and of philanthropy. The authors have in common that their institutions are grantees of the Sloan Foundation. Early in the 1990's the Foundation imagined some of the ways technology could revolutionize learning and began grant making. Sloan grantees have built their instructor-led, cohort-based, asynchronous, on-line programs on 5 principles: learning effectiveness, student and faculty satisfaction, cost effectiveness, and increasing accessibility. In the interests of collaboration, each case study is generously documented, and each is pointedly critiqued by peer reviewers.

Among more surprising results are data about actual and perceived learning, learning styles, orientation, interaction and collaboration, retention, time investment, workload, compensation, training, infrastructure, and scalability. Intentionally, the authors seek to make both the enthusiasms and the problems clear. The studies and the reviews point to the directions strategic planning must take to expand anyone's any-time, any-where learning-greater numbers and kinds of colleagues, faster global communications, speedier interactive data, more sophisticated audio-visuals, virtual communities, knowledge legacies, and more--that emerging technologies are generating in response to growing demands for continuous learning.