Editorial.

This issue marks the beginning of Academic Exchange Quarterly's sixth year of publication. From a small publication of only seventy-five pages in September of 1997 to recent issues of approximately two hundred pages, this quarterly has become a significant contribution to academic periodicals. It is one of the fastest-growing journals in the U.S.

Why has it grown so quickly? Major reasons are that its practical classroom applications are sought by college instructors and that the innovative staff of AEQ has combined the speed of the Internet with print publication. Submissions from colleagues are solicited through a variety of means, mainly by calls for papers through listservs and other electronic venues. Also, as the years have passed, we have received more and more submissions from regular Academic Exchange Quarterly readers.

Most submissions are sent as MS Word attachments and a few by postal mail to the New York office and then distributed to our worldwide reviewers for peer assessment. Authors may watch the progress of their submissions as the reviewers make their evaluations by going to our journal's unique "Track Your Submission" website: (rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/redak1.htm).

Some academic journals have a lower acceptance rate than Academic Exchange Quarterly. However, this figure can be misleading, especially if one considers the number of pages allocated to a specific issue or even the journal's affiliation. Given the increasing number of articles submitted and recommended for publication through AEQ's double-blind peer review process (as well as our desire to enhance our colleagues' knowledge of the theory and practice of teaching well), we intend to expand the length of the journal and publish all meritorious articles. We are fully self-supporting, so we have no requirement to pre-allocate any of our journal's space to subscribers, sponsors, or corporate owners.

Most members of the journal's editorial board have never met in person. We have created a virtual community of scholars (rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/aarigvo.htm). Our editorial board consists of teacher-scholars from many geographical locations including Finland, Australia, and Hong Kong. Physical distance is no longer a factor in our editorial decisions. Pedagogical concerns are truly shared internationally within Academic Exchange Quarterly's pages. This would explain why many of our readers and articles are from countries outside the United States: (rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/indekg.htm).

Additionally, AEQ offers a "mentor" program by which authors whose submissions need revision may seek advice from experienced editors. This is a free service to our colleagues, especially first-time authors: (rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/mentor3.htm). Our mission is to foster education, career growth, and the personal development of faculty on all levels: (rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/vision.htm).

To further that end, we have published issues focusing on such topics as "Service Learning," "Online Instruction and Its Assessment," "Educating Students with Disabilities," "Language Teaching and Learning," "Student Perceptions, Beliefs, and Attitudes," "The Many Faces of the Community College," "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning," "Assessment of Academics, Services, and Administration," "Distance Education and Critical Thinking," and other topics of interest.

Forthcoming issues will discuss such topics as "Information Literacy," "The Teaching of Culture and Literature," "Learning and Teaching on the Web," "Language Teaching and Learning," "Teaching the Novel and Short Fiction," "Crisis in the Writing Classroom," "Information Competence," "Collaboration and Consultation in Education," "Teaching Environmental Literature," and "Writing Center Theory and Application."

All of these issues and articles may be read online through Gale's Expanded Academic ASAP, Gale's Expanded Academic ASAP--International, and Gale's Infotrac OneFile (see your library's online subscriptions).

The topics listed above have been so popular with our readers that we have decided to expand the editorial board to include permanent editors with ongoing themes. Each editor will oversee a specific topic and encourage colleagues to submit articles on it. So far, we have editors for "Assessment," "Distributive Education," "Culture and Literature," "Part-Time Instruction," "Adult and Community Education," "Special Education ," and "Service-Learning." There will be other editors with topics of a perennial interest to those of us in the academic profession. If you have a topic of special interest, please do send a message and topic description to [e-mail].

We also have created a student-run online journal which publishes articles from students and faculty: http://asccsa.unco.edu/Students/AE-Extra. This journal gives students and faculty the opportunity to publish in a paperless medium, perhaps for the first time. Teachers are encouraged to send their students' essays and narratives to Academic Exchange Extra.

Because we are concerned about meeting the professional needs of our readers, we have created an online survey to find out what sorts of topics you would like to see in future issues. To complete this short survey (it won't take more than ten minutes of your time), please go to our web page and click on the "Survey" icon: http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb. Of those who do complete the survey and submit it to us, one will be chosen from a drawing to receive a free annual subscription to AEQ.

The next five years promise to be years of continued growth and quality for Academic Exchange Quarterly. Please share this journal with your colleagues, ask your library to subscribe, and tell other teacher-scholars that our journal provides a rich source of information for the teaching profession. The editorial board welcomes your participation with us in what Matthew Arnold, the great English poet and critic, once called an "endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."

Ben Varner
Chief Editor

For those involved in teaching in the healthcare field--the focus of the Special Section in this issue of Academic Exchange Quarterly (AEQ)--there are two frontiers in which we simultaneously pioneer. One frontier is the subject matter that we teach as new discoveries are made in the basic health sciences, in prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, and as the health and medical care delivery systems evolve. Research flowing from mapping of the human genome, integration of alternative and complementary health practices into western scientific medicine, newly emerging diseases such as West Nile virus, an aging population, exposure to anthrax are examples of events that are shaping the current frontier. As teachers we continuously face the challenge of keeping up to date in the subject matter of our field to ensure that what we practice and teach is accurate.

The other frontier, in which we are constantly operating, is the rapidly changing technology with which we do our work as teachers and as health professionals. We use technology both to teach subject matter to students and colleagues, and to deliver health services. The expansion of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) is an example of the changes in the ways to exchange health information. Population databases can be built and shared around the world for disease monitoring and for rapidly communicating health alerts. The technology used in telemedicine allows for transmission of medical images, diagnosis and consultation in emergencies at remote sites, home care, shared access to patient records, psychological counseling, and for teaching. Health science students work in virtual laboratories without experimenting on live or deceased organisms. Online courses offered via the WWW for health professions' training and for continuing education are proliferating. Increasingly the technology is becoming the subject matter. As teachers we have to not only teach our students using a variety of rapidly changing technologies, but we have to teach our students how to use technology in their professions.

Both frontiers present research challenges to those who teach. We must continue basic and applied research on the biomedical, psychosocial, economic and ethical aspects of discoveries, including technological developments and their application to the health professions. We must also be bold in developing new ways to use technological developments in our teaching. But perhaps highest among the challenges facing teachers of health professionals is in knowing which educational strategies are effective. We need to place a high priority on evaluative research to test the effectiveness of technologies as we apply them in teaching, including conducting comparative studies, and assessing cost-effectiveness.

The articles in the Health Section of this issue of AEQ illustrate how some health scientists are taking on the challenges on the frontiers of health care. The articles describe the application of technology in the delivery of health services, and the efforts to evaluate technologies used in teaching in the health professions. We hope that readers are stimulated to further the work illustrated in these articles by adopting and testing the developments in online education and telemedicine to further advance teaching in the health professions.

Dr. William H. Wiist
Director of PhD Program in Health Services
Walden University, MN