Sloan Semester

Free Online Courses offered to students from institutions impacted by Hurricane Katrina and students serving in the National Guard whose studies were interrupted by being called to active duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Sloan Consortium, an international association of colleges and universities committed to quality online education, is offering students displaced by Hurricane Katrina an opportunity to continue their education at no cost. In collaboration with the Southern Regional Education Board and with a $1.1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the special accelerated program will provide a wide range of courses to serve the learning needs of students at the community college, university and graduate level, regardless of academic discipline. These courses will be given by major universities and other Sloan Consortium members. Students interested in finding out more about the program and the free courses can do so at www.SloanSemester.org.

“We know that many colleges and universities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi will not be able to resume their fall semesters and students are scrambling for alternatives,” said Dave Spence, President of the Southern Regional Education Board. “With the help of dozens of colleges and universities nationwide, we can now offer students key courses online to bridge them through this difficult time and eventually allow them to return to their home campuses.”

I just wonder how easy/difficult it would be to act alike in underdeveloped or developing countries, with no need to wait for Katrinas. Well, ain’t hunger, aids, etc. tougher Katrinas?

[via Online Learning Update]

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If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

Peña-López, I. (2005) “Sloan Semester” In ICTlogy, #24, September 2005. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
Retrieved month dd, yyyy from https://ictlogy.net/review/?p=309

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2 Comments to “Sloan Semester” »

  1. It would be easy to act in the same way for developing & underdeveloped countries. I guess MIT’s Open Courseware project is an early example.

    Taking your suggestion, we know that making online courses available (without instructors) has almost no cost. The facilitators/instructors could be volunteers or, even better, a new business model could be created where people in these developing countries create instructor share-groups and get paid – but probably much less than tenured faculty in N. America or Europe.

    Perhaps we can move from open source software, to OS content, to OS teaching?

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