The Sloan-C Quality Pillars

In 1997, Dr. Frank Mayadas (of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation) first spoke about the "Five Pillars" that support quality online education.

The quality pillars are:

• Access
• Learning Effectiveness
• Cost Effectiveness (now Scale)
• Student Satisfaction
• Faculty Satisfaction

Dr. Mayadas proposed that institutions develop quantitative metrics to track their progress in each of the quality areas.

In 2008, the Sloan Consortium awarded the Inaugural Ralph E. Gomory Awards for Quality Online Education to two institutions (UIS, UCF) that best demonstrated, in a quantitative manner, their commitment to continuous improvement of the quality of their online programs using the Sloan-C Pillars.