The Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College has been awarded a three-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation starting in January 2008 to continue research on online and blended education in higher education and K-12 in the U.S.
Co-directors for the Babson Survey Research Group, Dr. I. Elaine Allen and Dr. Jeffrey Seaman, have conducted a number of research projects into online and blended learning in this country. They have received previous grants from the Foundation resulting in a number of widely-distributed publications.
The new research is expected to produce over a dozen additional reports, to be published by the Sloan Consortium, covering a variety of topics in online education. The work partners with the College Board for data collection, the Southern Regional Education Board and the Midwestern Higher Education Compact for regional reports, Hunter College for K-12 studies, and the American Distance Education Consortium and National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges for specialized reports.
“Reviewers of the grant application call these reports ‘the definitive source of information on online education,’” according to Allen. “Our reports have been downloaded tens of thousands of times with hundreds of references in scholarly articles and weekly references in the press.”
The most recent report on the state of online education among U.S. higher education will be released nationally on October 15th.
The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), created with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, encourages the collaborative sharing of knowledge and effective practices to improve online education in learning effectiveness, access, affordability for learners and providers, and student and faculty satisfaction.
The Babson Survey Research Group in the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurial Research at Babson College conducts regional, national, and international research projects, including survey design, sampling methodology, data integrity, statistical analyses and reporting.
