A Synthesis of Sloan-C Effective Practices, November 2010

Abstract

Encouraging continuous improvement in the quality, scale and breadth of online education, the Sloan Consortium invites practitioners to share effective practices. This report synthesizes effective practices submitted by Sloan-C members to the online collection at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/effective as of November 2010. The synthesis includes links to the provider institutions and to detailed postings about practices.

Investigating Asynchronous Online Communication: A Connected Stance Revealed

“…Additionally, students believe they learned more when expected to contribute to group discussion [33]. Moore [43] reports that, "for effective interaction, students and faculty benefit from clear expectations about communicating; clear expectations help manage the volume and quality of interaction" (p. 97). Beckett, Amaro-Jimenez, and Beckett [47] similarly argue that non-English speaking students in particular need explicit instructions and guidance in an online environment.…”

“…Because interaction is an important component of any learning event [6,41], it has been identified as one of the major constructs in online learning [20][21][22]. Studies have emphasized the importance of active participation among students in promoting the effectiveness of online learning [42][43][44][45][46] and improved academic performance [25,17]. Additionally, students believe they learned more when expected to contribute to group discussion [33].…”

Blended Learning System Performance Evaluation

“…These factors are related either directly, or indirectly, to the different system"s stakeholders: student, instructor (or tutor), learning material (course content), learning medium, environment, and administrative management. In addition, several studies [3,21,22] suggest that students" satisfaction and motivation are important factors in measuring the success and the effectiveness of the learning process and in discovering students" attitude toward the learning environment.…”

Education, educational services and students’ satisfaction - comparative study between Romanian and Iraqi universities

“…The goal is that all students who complete a course express satisfaction regarding the course rigor and fairness, related to professor and peer interaction, and related to support services. Moore, 2009); Sweeney and Ingram, 2001) define student satisfaction as: "The perception of enjoyment and accomplishment in the learning environment". There are many factors that lead to higher student satisfaction such as: perception of faculty knowledge and performance, interaction, communication, the learning environment and the university image and value (Tennyson and Hsia, 2010).…”