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The Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG) website allows instructors to gather learning-focused feedback from students. The SALG survey asks students to rate how each component of a course (e.g., textbook, collaborative work, labs) helped them to learn, and to rate their gains toward achieving the course goals. The SALG survey can be customized to fit any college-level course, and can be administered multiple times per course. A baseline instrument allows faculty to compare gains relative to incoming student characteristics.

As a follow-up to their study on how professors view online learning, Inside Higher Ed partnered with Babson Survey Research Group to explore how college professors and administrators interact with technology. The survey, summarized in Digital Faculty: Professors, Teaching and Technology, posed questions about digital learning content, e-books, social media, communication, learning management software and a variety of other technology-related issues. Here are a few key points from this excellent report.

Individual access and the ability of participants to use CMC are essential prerequisites for conference participation (stage one, at the base of the flights of steps). Stage two involves individual participants establishing their online identities and then finding others with whom to interact. At stage three, participants give information relevant to the course to each other. Up to and including stage three, a form of co-operation occurs, i.e. support for each person's goals. At stage four, course-related group discussions occur and the interaction becomes more collaborative. The communication depends on the establishment of common understandings. At stage five, participants look for more benefits from the system to help them achieve personal goals, explore how to integrate CMC into other forms of learning and reflect on the learning processes.