Dear Commons Community,

I arrived in Anaheim last night to attend the EDUCAUSE Education Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting. The featured speakers this year include:  Eric Grimson, Chancellor of MIT;  Peter E. Doolittle, Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning, and Executive Director of the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research at Virginia Tech; and Diane Oblinger, CEO and President of EDUCAUSE.

I will be attending a three-hour invitation session this morning organized by Tanya Joosten, Co-Project Director, National Research Center for Distance Education and Technology Advancement (DETA), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  DETA has just received a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education to:

• understand and determine distance education outcomes;
•  identify practices (instructional and institutional) that influence those outcomes; and
• conduct rigorous, interdisciplinary, and standardized research to identify outcomes and key factors for all students.

I look forward to seeing colleagues from around the country as we discuss issues related to the prioritization of desired outcomes, research questions, variables, measures, and a framework of inquiry for distance education research.

Tony