The Online Learning Consortium seems to be the go-to authority in all things online learning, and it’s my new best friend.

http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/

I will be spending hours perusing the timely on-demand webinars, reading the Online Learning journal (online, not on paper of course), and contemplating acquiring an Online Teaching Certificate, because, like pairs of good shoes, you can never have enough professional qualifications. Many of my colleagues have already written at length about the strengths of this website, and I doubt I can describe the nuggets of information gold to be found here as well as they have, so I won’t bore you, dear reader. To top it all off, the site is gorgeous and super easy to navigate.

However. The Consortium seems to be very US-focused. I can’t find anything about using online technologies to engage ESL learners, which is my gig. I can only find resources for online teaching and collaboration of TESOL instructors, which is helpful in itself, but still. I am just the tiniest bit disappointed. This whole marriage of ESL communicative competence instruction and web-based technology is still a new thing, I guess. Perhaps this is actually an opportunity, not a disappointment? Let’s go with that.

The Consortium is definitely a great repository of academic research in online learning. One interesting paper I saw discusses implicit bias in online communities based on a person’s name. Since you’re not meeting face to face, people often assume that online life is totally anonymous; however, just a person’s name can carry some weight and preconceived notions of ability or competence, and two professors from Ashford University, Wendy Conaway and Sonja Bethune, have done peer-reviewed research on that. Sounds like the kind of work we would do here at USF. Here’s the link to the .pdf, in case you’re interested.

Implicit Bias & First Name Stereotypes: Implications for Online Instruction

So, dig in. So much to read and watch and learn on this site. Membership is free! Gotta love that.