The Sloan Consortium [1] is an institutional and professional leadership organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education. The goal of the Sloan Consortium is to "help institutions and individual educators improve the quality, scale, and breadth of online education." The Consortium was originally funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and is now a non-profit, member sustained organization.
The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) helps learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. Sloan-C supports 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 degree and certificate programs offered by a wide range of regionally accredited member institutions, consortia, and industry partners; provides speakers and consultants to help institutions learn about online methodologies; hosts conferences and workshops to help implement and improve online programs; publishes the Sloan-C View, the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), and annual volumes of applied research studies; and conducts research, annual surveys on online learning and forums to inform academic, government and private sector audiences. Sloan-C also offers an awards program and an effective practices database so members can share the lessons they have learned.
Sloan-C generates ideas to improve products, services and standards for the online learning industry, and assists members in collaborative initiatives. Members include (1) private and public universities and colleges, community colleges and other accredited course and degree providers, and (2) organizations and suppliers of services, equipments, and tools that practice the Sloan-C quality principles.
1. Sloan Consortium (n.d.). Retrieved August 6, 2009, from http://www.sloanconsortium.org/aboutus/index.asp