Beta no more! Launch of Research Clearinghouse!

Guest post today is by Dr. Joe Freidhoff, Director of Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute at MVU. Also note that Dr. Freidhoff, Kristen DeBruler and Rebecca Stimson will be giving a Research in Review Webinar on Tuesday, October 15, from 3-4pm eastern. You can register for that webinar here. Enjoy the guest post from Dr. Freidhoff!

With Michigan’s school aid act for the 2012-13 school year, the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute (MVLRI), housed at Michigan Virtual University, was asked to create a clearinghouse for research reports, academic studies, evaluations, and other information related to K-12 online learning. During the same time, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) was also developing a similar repository for the field with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Rather than creating separate sites likely to contain much of the same information, iNACOL and MVLRI collaborated to offer the Research Clearinghouse for K-12 Blended and Online Learning website.

Available at k12onlineresearch.org, the Clearinghouse already houses over 450 references to important research and publications in the field of K-12 blended and online learning. Some references came from the previous work of the Virtual School Clearinghouse, a website initially sponsored by the BellSouth Foundation and later by the AT&T foundation and directed by Dr. Rick Ferdig. Other references have been identified by MVLRI, iNACOL or other project contributors such as the Center for Online Learning and Students with Disabilities. Many, but not all, of the resources have links to full versions of the publications.

To keep the Clearinghouse current and to maximize its use, iNACOL and MVLRI are interested in identifying organizations who would like to contribute their K-12 online and blended learning research references and who would promote the Clearinghouse resources to their audiences. As Project Contributors to the Clearinghouse, organizations would share relevant resources on a consistent basis and promote the Clearinghouse through their websites. We are also looking for interested individuals to help with proper tagging of resources under appropriate keywords.  As you can see from the Clearinghouse website, some keywords have been started, but the resources tagged within are not exhaustive, nor is a definitive set of keywords presented. If you would like to participate, please let Dr. Kathryn Kennedy know (kkennedy [at] inacol.org).

As a way of optimizing your experience using the Clearinghouse website, we recommend taking the time to look over the Getting Started Guide. This guide has helpful suggestions on improving search queries, selecting records, and exporting records for using in other bibliographic software.

We hope the Clearinghouse provides users with an excellent resource to find and share research on K-12 blended and online learning. We welcome your feedback. You can send questions or comments to clearinghouse [at] mivu.org.