Annual Sloan Consortium Online Learning Conference ~ Nov 9-11 ~ Orlando

The call for papers for the 17th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning opens Monday, February 14th. The theme of this year’s conference is “Online Learning, Teaching, and Research in the New Media Ecology” It is clear that we are in the midst of rapid and ongoing changes in the way that we communicate and represent ideas and these changes have profound consequence for how we know, learn, think, and teach in higher education and beyond. The dizzying pace of change is highlighted by the fact that even the relatively new conventions of online education associated with asynchronous learning networks are being challenged by emerging means of access, such as mobile and cloud computing, new forms of communication, such as video streaming and instant messaging, as well as the innovative modes of participation represented in social media. The more than 5.5 million college students who study online are increasingly at the forefront of this rapidly evolving landscape and it is crucial that we gain a clear understanding of how to best leverage the new media ecology to support our students’ learning.