The need to organize and bring together Information Technology (IT) and Distance Education (DE) Effective Practices is a top priority. In 1991, when I worked on the first UW-Extension Distance Education Faculty College with then, Continuing Education Associate Dean Dolores Niles, we heard from the faculty that they wanted to hear about what their peers were doing. This was an ongoing request at later faculty colleges and at the 1994 UW-Extension/UW System Distance Education Symposium that I co-chaired with Assistant to the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Pat Takemoto. And when UW-River Falls Professor Sally Standiford and I conducted surveys and focus groups for the 1995 K-12 initiative that became the VITAL Project, Effective Practices surfaced again as the "top need."

Examples of Effective Practices are regularly requested on many of the most widely subscribed listservs, for example DEOS and AAHESGIT. Educators and trainers want models. They want to know what works and what doesn't. As a result, UW System is building a base of Effective Practices. Through DESIEN, TTT (see NOTEWORTHY), the VITAL Web site and the Effective Practices Database these examples are growing. With new funding from UW System (see FUNDING), VITAL and the Effective Practices Database will become even more valuable.

This issue of DESIEN begins a sharing of practices. Let us know about your institution's practices that you think have been particularly successful.