Engineering Society Begins Online Learning Initiative

Rapid changes in technology have had a significant impact on continuing engineering education in particular and the American Society for Engineering Education's (ASEE) learnon.org has proved a good, cost-free resource for those in the engineering field who want to keep up on current developments.

Engineers, whether they are students or professionals, can search the database by course, subject matter, geographic location, price and course provider. The site offers traditional classroom courses, correspondence courses via the web, evening and weekend seminars and workshops, as well as CD-ROM and video courses. The browser also can access articles, academic papers, conference announcements and news items related to continuing education and distance learning, as well as useful links to all of the course providers' websites. Learnon.com has 4,500 engineering, technology and computer-related courses offered by more than 70 providers, including many of the nation's top engineering schools and professional associations. The ASEE is a non-profit operation with close to 12,000 members who help in furthering education in the field of engineering and engineering technology.

"Our strategic goal is to become the dominant provider of IT information both domestically and internationally while remaining free and easily accessible to users," says Alison Stack, marketing and Learon.org manager for ASEE (Washington, DC). "Our course load is continuously growing and what is great is that many of them are not traditional classroom courses. We let you know the location; whether it's traditional classroom, web-based, phone and video courses; who provides the service you are receiving - a university or professional organization - and how you go about registering for it. We post papers of the latest technology being discussed at the universities; we have a vast array of links to state accreditation boards in case the user needs to be re-accredited with his/her state or if he/she changes residences. We also will be providing a 'technology solutions' site for engineering students in the near future to talk with professionals, exchange ideas and proliferate the flow of information. The site will have companies that will provide tools to facilitate e-learning and links to their products."

The idea for the website came about when ASEE officials noticed there was not one all-encompassing site out there offering engineers up-to-date information. They brainstormed and came up with the idea to have a portal of all of the continuing education classes - with learnon.org simply growing from there. As time went on, the ASEE made the site more user-friendly and more information was added. The database can be easily searched using course name, subject matter and location. More advanced searches can include credit type, cost, course time and course provider. Signing up for a course is easy - in each course description there is a link to the course provider's website - simply follow the link to register for the course(s) you want. ASEE has further plans for the two-year-old learnon.org site, including expanding its reach overseas. Presently, ASEE does not have any international connections and has been looking at international universities and international professional institutions.

"All of our partnerships are designed to gain exposure for learnon.org and improve content," says Stack. "The goal of all of our partnerships is to mutually benefit each organization by joint marketing efforts to increase visibility to each partner through logo trades, banner and swaps, print ad trades and joint press releases. The partnerships provide us with a way to reach potential learnon.org users and inform them of this valuable resource. Through these partnerships and new ideas, learnon.org will continue to grow and expand so that we provide the best quality information to our users."