The Sloan Foundation has announced a new online catalog of degree and certificate programs offered by universities, colleges, and community colleges who are members of its ALN Consortium. While membership in the consortium is automatic for institutions that have received grant support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to teach and give degrees over the internet, it is also open to other institutions through a peer review process. The online catalog enables visitors to the website to search for programs by discipline area, credential offered, institution or by custom search criteria. The director of the Center for Instructional Technology at West Virginia's Marshall University has devised an interactive worksheet to help administrators calculate the price of creating a distance education program. The site asks users a dozen questions about their institutional environments and strategies for distance ed, then generates a spreadsheet with cost and revenue projections for the first seven years of their online program.
Users can alter variables and get new estimates to test different scenarios.
The site does warn that its calculations provide only rough estimates and users should verify figures independently. The worksheet also doesn't take enough factors into account, such as the fact that the computing infrastructure for online courses can also be used to enhance traditional courses. Nevertheless, it's a starting point for first-timers. The site provides 40 examples of assignments or exercises used in online courses at various institutions. The examples are organized by type of technology used, as well as by type of learning activity, such as field trips, class presentations and case studies.