"Development of e-learning as a tool which supports teaching in public and non-public universities or in a virtual institution (type open university) which has been created especially for that purpose." Such a record has been included in a document Foundations for a change of the Law about Higher Education which was published on the Ministry of Science and Higher Education's website in the second half of March 2007. The Ministry carried out first public consultations on the bill which is to regulate distance education in academic institutions. Last issue of "e-mentor" included a paper on draft of regulation on e-learning created by the Association of Academic E-learning. Summing up, we may say that something's going on.. But isn't it going too slowly? Higher education institutions have been implementing ICT in didactics and benefiting from their values for a few years already. Also other schools are very interested in such strategies although they are usually in infancy. So when will Polish universities teach thousands of online students (like eg. University of Phoenix) or pupils (like eg. Insight Schools which notabene has recently been bought by Apollo Group for a considerable sum of 15 million dollars)? When will traditional teaching become saturated with ICT and will fully benefit from values which are guaranteed by blended learning? Since we had already agreed that it is necessary to regulate such form of classes, we shouldn't delay the date when the act takes effect. Otherwise, we will remain in a situation when each e-learning activity of a university, a school or their employees is at first examined whether it is legal and not whether it is of a good quality and didactic value.

Another widely discussed and controversial record of Foundations... is a proposal to abolish a duty of writing and defending Master's theses which is an attempt to counteract the pathology of plagiarism. The issue is also discussed in 'e-mentor'. The article of Sebastian Kawczynski, PhD in the e-business section presents another systemic solution to the problem. Particular attention should also be devoted to a paper of prof. Witold T. Bielecki about influence of global webonomics on e-learning. I also recommend an article on managing knowledge delivered from outside the company and two reviews - a bestseller of Thomas Friedman - The World is Flat. A brief history of the globalized world in the 21st century and a work of Henry Jenkins - Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide.

Marcin Dąbrowski
Chief editor