Lumadue, Waller Win Sloan-C Effective Practice Award

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) has named A&M-Commerce's Dr. Rick Lumadue, director of the global eLearning master's program, and Dr. Rusty Waller, director of the global eLearning bachelor's program, winners of the 2014 Sloan-C Effective Practice Award in Using Emerging Technology.

Their winning study, “The Intersection of Technology & Institutional Effectiveness: Leveraging MERLOT Content Builder with Emerging Technology to Assess Programmatic Student Learning Outcomes,” assessed the achievement of student learning outcomes in an online master's degree program. In April, Lumadue and Waller will be recognized for their achievement at the Seventh Annual Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Online Learning in Dallas.

“Receipt of this award serves to highlight our institution's commitment to supporting creativity and innovation in the delivery and assessment of digital educational programs,” said Lumadue.

Recipients of the international Sloan-C Effective Practice Award are chosen based on a peer review of their submission, utilizing the criteria of innovation, replicability, potential impact, scope and supporting documentation. The selection process focuses on access, learning effectiveness, faculty satisfaction, student satisfaction and scalability in online education.

To meet Sloan-C's criteria, Lumadue and Waller received assistance from A&M-Commerce organizations.

“I would like to acknowledge the awesome support provided by Colloquy and the Faculty Center for Teaching with Technology, without whose assistance this award would not have been possible,” said Waller.

According to its website, Sloan-C is “an institutional and professional leadership organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education, helping institutions and individual educators improve the quality, scale, and breadth of online education.”

Lumadue and Waller, members of the department of educational leadership, joined the faculty at A&M-Commerce in 2008 and 2005, respectively. Both received doctoral degrees from the University of North Texas.

All of the 2014 Sloan-C Effective Practice Award winners are listed on the Sloan-C website. Read more about Lumadue and Waller's study here.