UMUC Wins Prestigious Sloan Award for Excellence in Online Programming

For immediate release: October 10, 2001
by Andrea C. Martino, Director, Public Relations

(Adelphi, MD) - University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has been named the recipient of the 2001 Sloan Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) Consortium Award for Excellence in Institution-Wide ALN Programming. This is the first year that the Sloan ALN Consortium has offered awards for excellence in Web-based education.

"In the past decade we’ve gone from several hundred students enrolled in online education courses to more than one million," said Frank Mayadas, president of the Sloan ALN Consortium. "It’s time we recognize the individuals who have advanced the field and the institutions that are leading the way."

In addition to being known worldwide for its breadth of degrees, quality of programs, and yearly online enrollment nearing 25,000 students, UMUC is noted for providing online education asynchronously, meaning every student in an online course need not be participating in class discussions at the same time. Online students in one course are often from various time zones. Asynchronous learning also enables students in one time zone to participate in class at their convenience, at any time of day.

Since UMUC began delivering courses electronically in 1994, for many years the university’s online enrollments doubled or tripled each year. This past year, UMUC amassed approximately 63,000 online enrollments worldwide. The Maryland Higher Education Commission recently projected that the university’s enrollment in the United States would nearly triple because of the university’s expertise in online education and particular attention to adult students.

"This award is a much-deserved recognition of the talented and hardworking faculty and staff who have made UMUC a benchmark deliverer of educational opportunities," said UMUC Provost & Chief Academic Officer Nicholas Allen. "We have good reason to be proud of the fact that we offer more than 70 undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs online, and that those programs have the same level of quality as our traditional 'face-to-face' offerings.

"The award also signifies the importance of UMUC's decision to surround its online academic programs with a full array of online student and faculty services," Allen continued. "These services contribute greatly to the overall educational experience of our online students."

Allen posits that the research his university conducts into the pedagogy of online education contributed to its success in garnering the Sloan award. For example, UMUC’s research arm is studying the frequency and interactivity of faculty-student and student-student communications in both online and traditional courses. The University Continuing Education Association recently awarded UMUC for its UMUC–Verizon Teaching with Technology Web site, at http://www.umuc.edu/virtualteaching/, to demonstrate new online technologies that faculty worldwide can use in their "virtual" classrooms.

According to Burks Oakley, chair of the 2001 Sloan ALN Consortium Awards Selection Committee, the Sloan award recognizes the exponential growth in online learning. "UMUC clearly had the strongest program of online education across the entire institution in 2001," said Oakley. "They also have shown leadership on a national level in helping to formulate policies related to online education."

The Sloan award will be presented on Nov. 16 at the 7th Sloan ALN Consortium International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Fla. The Consortium is an association of more than 80 institutions of higher education that have joined together to deliver and promote online learning.

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