Sloan ALN Summer Workshops: Learning Effectiveness and Faculty Satisfaction

Background

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has been funding the development of ALN courses and programs since 1993. There are now thousands of ALN courses being taught in the United States and abroad. However, there is little published work on two areas that are among the most critical to the widespread adoption of ALN - these areas are learning effectiveness and faculty satisfaction. Briefly, these issues can be summarized in two questions: How well do people actually learn in ALN settings? Do faculty like teaching ALN courses as much as traditional courses? A number of institutions now have been working in the ALN area for up to six years, and faculty and staff from these institutions have accumulated a body of knowledge to address these critical questions. It now is important that these individuals report their results and that experts in the ALN field critically examine these findings.

The need for a critical study of learning effectiveness and faculty satisfaction is made even more critical by the rapid growth of investment in ALN programs. Federal and state governments, foundations, and the private sector are creating new institutions and programs that seek to take advantage of ALN methodologies and technologies. Taxpayers and other investors will soon require specific information on the impact of ALN programs and on the effectiveness and efficiency of different ALN approaches to online teaching and learning.

While the annual ALN conference has sessions that deal with these important issues, the size of the conference (500-600 attendees) and the short time for each presentation prevent a critical, in-depth discussion of these issues. To motivate such a discussion, we are organizing two workshops for faculty and staff who have substantial experience in offering ALN courses and programs. The Sloan ALN grantees are the most experienced in this field, and will form the nucleus of the individuals invited to these workshops. The workshops will be held over a two-and-one-half day period, with equal time devoted to each topic. This event would feature case study presentations on the relevant topics, with ample time for critical discussion and feedback. The workshops could advance the field of ALN in number of ways:

• Results from formal case studies can be discussed by a critical and knowledgeable audience, and disseminated widely
• Methods of data collection and analysis can be shared
• The community of advanced ALN practitioners would be enhanced, which would improve ALN practices through collaboration and networking among the Sloan-funded institutions.