OLC Effective Practices

To help make quality online education accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, the members of the OLC community share techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for them. All effective practices are peer reviewed to insure quality and to give submitters some documentation for tenure and promotion files. OLC focuses on five pillars of quality (see framework and narrative) in online education: access, learning effectiveness, faculty satisfaction, student satisfaction, and scale (institutional commitment to achieve capacity enrollment via cost effectiveness). 

Two rounds of Effective Practices are awarded annually. The first round is awarded each spring at the OLC Innovate conference. The second round of 2018 Effective Practice Awards is presented at the OLC Accelerate conference.

See 2018 Effective Practice Award winners – fall 2018.

See 2018 Effective Practice Award winners – spring 2018. 

Effective Practice Submissions for 2018 – Closed

2018 Awards (spring 2018) were presented at OLC Innovate in April 2018. Awards for the current round of submissions will be presented at OLC Accelerate in Orlando, FL, November 14-16, 2018. 

Submissions for effective practices included topics related to innovation and/or technology that enhance the field of digital learning. These practices are peer reviewed and can help with tenure and promotion. (When the submission process is open): To add an effective practice, login to OLC and then click here: Add an Effective Practice (you must be logged in). Please note it will take time for peer reviewers to review EP submissions.  We will email you when the committee has made selections. All Effective Practice Award recipients for the current selection round will be asked to present their effective practice at OLC Innovate. 

Preparing for Submission

To help you prepare for submission you will need to submit the following fields on the submission form. 

• Brief Abstract of the Effective Practice
• Expanded Description of the Effective Practice
• Supporting Information to help us understand the Effective Practice – the community will see these support documents.

View the Effective Practices

• Sorted by Institution
• Sorted by Alphabetical Order
• Sorted by Pillar
• See Evidence for Effective Practice Awards

Effective Practice Awards Selection Committee

• Renee Aitken, AVP for Educational Effectiveness & Institutional Accreditation, Wright State University
• Devon Cancilla, Chief Knowledge Officer, Online Learning Consortium
• Bucky Dodd, Executive Director of eLearning and Innovations, University of Central Oklahoma
• Arifa Garman, Director of E-Learning, Gulf Coast State College
• Angela M. Gibson, Associate Director, Curriculum Innovation, Colorado State University – Global Campus
• Jaya Kannan, Director, Office of Digital Learning, Sacred Heart University

• Dr. Sedef Smith, Executive Director of Instruction & Faculty Development, University of Houston Downtown

If you have questions, please contact:

Devon Cancilla, Ph.D
Online Learning Consortium
Chief Knowledge Officer
E-mail:  Devon.Cancilla@onlinelearning-c.org

Sign up for email updates to get notified of award nominations and winners.