The basis for the third volume came from a Sloan-C workshop that convened in September 2001 in which ten peer-reviewed case studies were presented to a group of online educators. These case studies deal with a number of important questions concerning quality in online education, including: What do learners like and dislike about online learning? What makes faculty happy and unhappy about teaching online? How can schools drive down costs and prices to achieve capacity enrollment while maintaining and improving the quality their distinctive missions have established? How can schools widen access to their programs by creating virtual environments that give timely and complete academic support and administrative services to build learning communities?

Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C is primarily a consortium of accredited higher education providers and organizations that encourages collaboration and sharing of knowledge and effective practices to improve online education.