eCollege’s New Academic Services Help Faculty Deliver Quality Online Courses

Offerings Provide Foundation for Successful Online Programs

DENVER – August 20, 2002 – eCollege(SM) [Nasdaq: ECLG], the leading provider of technology and services for online higher education programs, today announced new Academic Service offerings designed to help its customers build faculty competencies, create positive faculty and student experiences, and drive program retention.

“One of the main reasons why many faculty are hesitant to teach fully online is the lack of training and development support that often accompanies a general eLearning software license,” said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege. “We believe it is crucial to give faculty a foundation from which they can create engaging courses to foster student satisfaction, and ultimately drive online program retention.”

eCollege’s expert Academic Services department of more than 30 instructional designers, course developers, instructional multimedia developers, and project managers has trained several thousand faculty members over the years. They have helped faculty develop more than 6,000 online courses, and have provided course auditing services for many more self-developed courses, in a variety of disciplines for higher education, K-12 and corporate partners. The following new support offerings are based on direct feedback from faculty and administrators:

· iSupport(SM) – Faculty members can now call or email the Academic Services team seven days a week for unlimited advice and mentoring on designing, developing or teaching a quality online course. In addition to this, institutions can also purchase CD Bundles(SM), hourly blocks of design and development time that can be used across multiple courses.

· Conversion Services – Institutions that want to convert existing online courses from other course management systems to eCollege AU+(SM), and/or leverage existing publisher content within their courses, can take advantage of eCollege’s course conversion options.

· New Trainings and Workshops – New trainings and workshops, including Online Multimedia and Effectively Managing Your Online Course, are available online, on-campus or at eCollege’s Denver training facility. eCollege also offers Real Time Learning Labs, which are 90 minute synchronous sessions about specific topics including New Features in eCollege AU+, Using ClassLive(SM) and Working with Gradebook.

· 508 Capabilities – eCollege has set unprecedented levels of Section 508 accessibility for disabled students and faculty in both its products and services. eCollege can either train faculty to modify their content to meet 508 federal accessibility guidelines, or retrofit a course for a faculty member at a discounted hourly rate.

“In three short months, the Academic Services team managed to develop 40 highly interactive, content rich, professional development modules for teachers,” said Todd Hitchcock, Technical Information Services Officer, Durham District School Board. “We have received extremely positive comments from the Ontario Ministry of Education, State Boards of Education, and numerous school board officials. All who view these modules are amazed with the quality of content, attention to detail, and expert design.”

For more information, please email academicservices@ecollege.com or call 1-888-376-9496.

About eCollege

eCollege [Nasdaq: ECLG] is the leading eLearning technology and services provider to educational markets. eCollege designs, builds and supports high quality online degree, certificate/diploma and professional development programs for colleges, universities, school districts and state departments of education. eCollege’s clients include such institutions as National University; University of Massachusetts Amherst; University of Colorado; Drexel University; DeVry University, Inc.; The New England College of Finance; and the Kentucky Virtual High School. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Denver. For more information, visit www.eCollege.com.

This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the securities laws. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks. Actual results may differ materially. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from estimates or projections contained in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, our network infrastructure and computer systems failing; substantial and increasing competition in the online education market; our customers’ ability to achieve successful online programs; future technological advances by our competitors; and such other factors as are discussed in our most recent Form 10-K Annual Report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), which you are encouraged to review in connection with this release. We believe that these forward-looking statements are reasonable, however, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations and speak only as of the date of this release. We are not obligated to publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.

eCollege, eCollege AU+, iSupport and CD Bundles are service marks of eCollege. All other trademarks and service marks or registered trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective owners.