WEB SITE FOR COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS SHOWS DYNAMIC SALES
INCREASE - The web site Service Plus (The Thomson Corp) over a three-year
period has increased its sale of books to colleges from $10 million to more than
$104 million, an increase of almost 1,000%. The service provides US college
bookstores with round-the-clock online account management tools, title research
capabilities, and a powerful ordering function. The web site is designed to handle
basic customer inquiries, such as pricing and availability. Live chat with a customer
service representative is also available. During the busiest ordering period in 2002
more than 10,500 online order-status inquiries were received. See details at:
http://www.thomson.com/learning/learning.jsp

DIGITAL REPOSITORIES AND LINKS GROWING RAPIDLY - The number
and variety of digital collections or digital repositories or "referatories" of instructional
resources is growing rapidly, as are the number of individual links on the Web to
attractive instructional resources. According to Tom Carey, co-chair of the board for
the highly respected MERLOT collection: http://www.merlot.org "We need to
develop alternatives to the existing choice of 'free for all' academic repositories
versus 'fee for all' commercial collections. We need to generalize from exemplary
learning objects to frameworks which would allow others to re-use the instructional
design with their own content." Carey will co-lead a free Webcast on this topic
March 11, 2003. For registration (required in advance for free Webcast)
see: http://www.tltgroup.org/collectionsregistration.htm For more info about collections,
see: http://www.tltgroup.org/resources/Collections/Home.htm
(TLT-SWG, no 60, Collections and Repositories, 26 Feb 03)

DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS AND ATTRITION RATES - The growth
of distance education has been accompanied by high attrition rates. Since college and
university funding depends on enrollment, understanding the underlying causes of attrition
is extremely important. In "Identifying Predictors of Academic Persistence in Distance
Education" (USDLA JOURNAL, vol 17 no 1, Jan 03) Angie Parker, Associate Dean
of Distributed Learning for Yavapai College, describes her research into attrition rates in
distance education programs. Her study indicates that there is a correlation between locus
of control (the level of self-motivation) and academic persistence. For the complete article
see: http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/JAN03_Issue/article06.html (CIT INFOBITS
January 2003)