Dallas, TX (PRWEB) November 05, 2012
Academic Partnerships announces the launch of Faculty eCommons, a new community site for online faculty across the globe. Faculty eCommons is a destination where online instructors can find and share research, effective practices and professional development resources. This announcement advances Academic Partnership’s mission to better serve their university partners while fostering the growth of online education.
“We’re thrilled to give our teachers what they’ve been asking for – a comprehensive site where they can connect with and learn from the best online educators around the world,” said Randy Best, chairman of Academic Partnerships. “Additionally, we are pleased to offer faculty a number of research grants to support their research into online education.”
Academic Partnerships’ Faculty eCommons has committed to awarding $50,000 in research grants in 2012 to support individual or collaborative faculty research and increase scholarly knowledge on the effectiveness of online learning.
As a resource and community for online teachers, Faculty eCommons’ mission is to:
- Promote the scholarship of online teaching and its application to student learning.
- Support faculty collaboration across disciplines and institutions to improve student learning.
- Increase the rewards for and prestige of online teaching excellence.
- Expand the existing Academic Partnerships faculty services with leading-edge tools, pedagogies and methods for teaching in virtual environments.
- Create a repository of faculty training and resources that are better, less costly, and more readily available than current services.
Academic Partnerships has also formed a strategic partnership with the Sloan Consortium exclusively for Academic Partnerships’ university partner faculty. Faculty at partner colleges will receive free membership to the Sloan Consortium and direct access to their resources on the Faculty eCommons site, as well as access to the nationally recognized quality standards in online learning, the SLOAN-C Quality Scorecard.
“Academic Partnerships’ commitment to improving online education goes hand-in-hand with our mission: to better serve students through the power of quality online education,” said Dr. Bruce N. Chaloux, executive director and chief executive officer of The Sloan Consortium. “We’re looking forward to work together and help teachers through Faculty eCommons and beyond.”
About Faculty eCommons
Developed by Academic Partnerships, Faculty eCommons is a social learning ecosystem for faculty across the globe to work together and better online education. The site offers industry research, guidance, best practices, and professional development, with a focus on national quality standards. Academic Partnerships has a strategic alliance with Sloan Consortium and a subscription to the Quality Matters™ program, which are available to AP Partner faculty. For more information, visit: http://facultyecommons.com.
About Academic Partnerships
Dallas-based Academic Partnerships partners with public universities to deliver students full degree programs online. The company was founded by social entrepreneur, Randy Best, an 18-year veteran of developing innovative learning experiences to improve education. Academic Partnerships helps universities increase access by taking quality of a public university to scale. It provides the technology, marketing, student recruitment and faculty support necessary to serve online students. Academic Partnerships is guided by the principle that the opportunities presented through distance learning make higher education more accessible and achievable for students in the U.S. and globally. For more information, please visit http://www.academicpartnerships.com.