Sep. 29, 2009 (Business Wire) -- In recognition of outstanding quality in online learning, The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) will present American Public University System (APUS) with the 2009 Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education at the 15th Sloan-C Annual International Conference in October. APUS is a regionally and nationally accredited online institution of higher education operating through two universities, American Military University and American Public University, which educate more than 53,000 adult learners worldwide.
The Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education honors the institution that best demonstrates its commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs through quantitative application of the Sloan-C Quality Pillars; specific characteristics that exemplify best practices in online higher education. The five interdependent pillars, upon which quality online education practices are based, include: access, learning effectiveness, scale, student satisfaction and faculty satisfaction.
“The consortium recognized American Public University System primarily for its excellence in collecting analytics across the enterprise – from managing enrollment and retention to assessing outcomes in student learning and faculty satisfaction,” said Dr. Burks Oakley III of Sloan-C. “APUS has designed and implemented a sound and effective data-driven approach to managing all aspects of the learning enterprise in a manner that is exemplary of the world’s best online educational practices.”
The Sloan Consortium is an organization of universities, colleges and institutions committed to advancing effective practices in online education and expanding the quality of online higher education.
“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by this prestigious community of higher education institutions,” said Dr. Frank McCluskey, Provost of APUS. “We shaped our institutional practices around the Sloan-C Quality Pillars and they have become an integral part of our institution and mission. We believe that they accurately represent the foundation by which online students are best served and through their application, learning is most effective.”
“The heart of our university’s approach to academic quality is data-driven decision-making to measure learning. Each day we utilize our data warehouse, graphical dashboards, standard statistical measures, semantic analysis engines and other tools to help us analyze, manage and improve student learning,” added Dr. McCluskey.
APUS embraces the Community of Inquiry Framework survey as an end of course survey to measure student engagement and learning, as part of its daily effort to improve learning.
