There are five papers in the new issue of OJDLA, the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration.    In order, they are:

• Building an Evaluation Plan for Fully Online Degree Programs presents a plan for designing and running a good quality online degree programme, based on the Institute of HE Policy “Quality on the Line” guidelines introduced back in 2000.    It’s worthy enough, but the world is not short of prescriptive frameworks on how to run good courses, and I’m not sure one more really adds all that much.

• Faculty, Copyright Law and Online Course Materials: a short, straightforward essay on how the growth of online materials is affecting perceptions of copyright in the US.    Though focussed on the effects on faculty in one US university, it does start to open up the more general issues:   how copyright can evolve in the era of cut&paste.

• The Relationship of Bandwidth, Interaction and Performance in Online Classes: A Study.    Yes, bandwidth will have an effect on online classes, and online learning in general.    The possibilities unpacked in this paper may be valid, and relevant to some.    But any study whose main conclusion is that more research is needed is safely missable.

• A Quality Assurance Framework for Recruiting, Training (and Retaining) Virtual Adjunct Faculty is yet another attempt at a definitive framework for quality distance learning.    It’s specific to universities, though potentially applicable to any large provider.    It's sensible, even usual at times.   So if you're new to the business, it could be useful.   Otherwise, probably not.

• Re-Conceptualizing Intimacy and Distance in Instructional Models.    As for the last paper, I am genuinely at a loss as to what to make of it.    For one thing, the attempted sophistication of its language (or vocabulary at least) is not matched by the quality of its analysis, which is adequate but no more than that.    For another, though it appears in a journal specialising in distance learning issues, it is better characterised as a polemic to persuade the more traditional educator that intimacy of a kind is possible in distance learning.    Any tutor who has been exposed to an hour of the marital difficulties or medical history of some otherwise unoccupied distance learner could have told them that.    There's nothing wrong with the paper (or, at least, not a lot).    I just don't know what it's for.

Source:    http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring91/spring91.htm