"I wanted to comment on your picking support for the subject of future DESIEN issues. Kolbe and Bunker (1997) examined The American Journal of Distance Education between the years 1987-1995 and classified only 2.3% of the articles under student administration and support. Support has not received the attention in the journals. Some of this is due to the pragmatic nature of support, its a service function that gets little attention." (Robert Oehlkers, Instrumentation Tech, Space Science and Engineering).

"Support definitely needs to be brought to the attention of those who make the decisions in both policy and budget. A series on the areas where support is needed will to be extremely valuable." (Terry Wolcum, Consultant Stillwater, MN)

"The topics coming up in DESIEN (on support) sound great!" (Julie M. Hellweg, Director of Credit Outreach, UW-Stevens Point Extension)

Because support happens, for the most part, "behind the scenes" it's more difficult to see how absolutely critical it is. But ask faculty members or trainers what they most need and they'll reply that in addition to incentives they need "support" - technical support, training support, site support, design support... It's a critical area we need to draw attention to. It was good to see in the 1997 Campus Computing Survey that support is beginning to become a pressing priority. (See STATS below - Rosemary Lehman)