Online learning

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is a "consortium of institutions and organizations committed to quality online education...[and] encourages the collaborative sharing of knowledge and effective practices to improve online education in learning effectiveness, access, affordability for learners and providers, and student and faculty satisfaction."

Sloan-C maintains a catalog of certificate and degree programs offered by accredited members (both University of Hawaii at Manoa and at Hilo offer certificate and degree programs); provides workshops, conferences, consultants; and publishes studies and surveys on online learning.

Associated Press (AP) reports today on the Sloan-C fourth annual survey of online learning in U.S. higher education. Findings include:

• Nearly 3.2 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year.
• The more than 800,000 additional online students is more than twice the number added in any previous year.
• Online students, like the overall student body, are overwhelmingly undergraduates.
• More than 96 percent of the very largest institutions (more than 15,000 total enrollments) have some online offerings.
• Doctoral/Research institutions have the greatest penetration of offering online programs as well as the highest overall rate (more than 80%) of having some form of online offering (either courses or full programs).
• 62 percent of academic leaders rated the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face.
• Faculty issues, both acceptance of online and the need for greater time and effort to teach online, are also important barriers.

Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006
(November 2006, pdf, 27pp/424kB)