Dear e-mentor Readers,

I would like to encourage you to read the articles chosen for the December issue of the magazine. This time, however, instead of giving usual recommendations of particular articles, I intend to refer to an important fact for e-learning community and to discuss its consequences. In the beginning of 2011 an alteration to the regulation on the prerequisites for classes to be conducted with the use of distance learning methods and forms entered into force (the Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education of 2 November 2011). The Ministry has adjusted the law regulations concerning e-learning to the National Strategic Reference Framework, yet simultaneously has sustained the provisions which hamper the development of e-education, both in the country as well as in a foreign expansion of our higher education institutions. It is hard to come up with a different interpretation of the three pillars of the discussed issue: firstly, limiting the number of hours for distance classes to 60 percent of the studies curriculum, secondly, imposing the requirement of organizing examinations on the university's premises, and finally, determining the forms of classes focused on nurturing practical skills, which ought to be conducted stationary. One has to rack his brain to point any other factors that could impede more both taking the advantages of the possibilities of increasing society's access to education and creating the competitive advantage of Polish higher education institutions.

It should be also mentioned that in the case of equalization of educational opportunities it is about many social groups, whose health, professional or life situation prevented them from undertaking traditional studies. Considering the consequences of the law regulations from the perspective of a university's activity, it is worth to mention as well the three unexploited areas of obtaining the recipients of educational services, namely the abovementioned groups in Poland, the Polish diaspora abroad, including young emigration, and finally, foreign students. Particularly this third area ought to be considered in the categories of lost advantages. It is not the obtaining a dozen of Asian students but rather the entering foreign markets with an offer that should be regarded as a success of a Polish educational institution.

A bitter pill is the fact that, while at the level of regulation project (of 29 July 2011), the Ministry withdrew percentage limiting of hours to be conducted with the use of method and forms of distance teaching, it later restored that restriction, which came as a surprise for the e-learning community. And such voice has been expressed in multiple ways, i. a. in the form of the Association of Academic E-learning's opinion sent to the Ministry at the stage of consultations.

Chief editor
Marcin Dąbrowski