Online Learning

Democratizing education with anytime, anywhere learning

Internet-based courses and seminars present many advantages to anyone seeking to deliver educational material. The Web offers an effective way to present instructional content that can be tailored for local needs, and often at reduced cost.

Since 1995, the Concord Consortium has pioneered online instruction. Over the years we have developed and refined the Concord Consortium e-Learning Model for the design and operation of online courses. Using this model, we have delivered over 200 successful courses reaching more than ten thousand teachers, students, and online course developers. Our approach is based on collaborative learning in asynchronous groups guided by trained facilitators. See Online Learning Services for our full range of instructional offerings in designing and facilitating online courses using the CC e-Learning Model.

The Virtual High School (VHS) represents the largest application of our approach. In this five-year project in collaboration with Hudson Public Schools, we offered over 200 outstanding courses to students throughout the world. We are proud to have spun out the VHS in October 2001 as an independent nonprofit cooperative that will continue this work.

We are currently creating video case studies for teacher professional development and the integration of technology in elementary math.

The Concord Consortium is a founding member of the NSF Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT). Through CILT, we are working with other members to develop and study the educational impact of the latest developments in collaborative netware, ubiquitous computing, and network-based evaluation.

Additionally, we have helped create two companies -- Metacourse and OnLine Learning International -- to make the Concord model available to other organizations on a commercial basis.

For more information about our approach to online learning, see the following:

Books

Essential Elements: Prepare, Design, and Teach Your Online Course - July 2002
Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators - January 2000
InquiryWorks! Real Teachers, Real Stories - January 1999

Newsletter Articles

Online Courses that Work... and Some that Don't - February 2002
Ten Things You Need To Know - September 2000
Why Don't Face-to-Face Teaching Strategies Work In the Virtual Classroom? - September 2000

See also:

Independent research comparing VHS courses offered online and face-to-face

Making Thinking Visible - Student Work
The Making Thinking Visible Project was designed to allow students an opportunity to explore differences between East and West Coast geology through model building and collaborative discourse as a way to integrate, apply, and extend what they learned from Earth Science Class to understand more deeply why there are differences on the East and West coasts with respect to Geology.