A partnership with

Letter from the Editor, January 2006

Dear Readers,

We regret to announce that we will no longer be publishing The IMEJ of Computer-Enhanced Learning. We began IMEJ as both an experiment in electronic publication and an attempt to foster good teaching that benefits from computer technology. In 1999, when we published our first issue, computer-enhanced learning was still relatively new to many teachers, and readers seemed eager to learn how others were using educational technology in their classrooms. Now, in 2006, computer-based instruction has become "standard practice" for many, and we've found it increasingly difficult to attract articles with novel approaches or rigorous assessment of these approaches. It is also the case that authors remain reluctant to submit their best work to an electronic journal because non-print journals are considered less valuable in many tenure and promotion systems. Still, we appreciate the many fine articles we did receive in our seven years of publication and thank these authors for their collaboration in adding multimedia supplements to their work.

How would we judge the success of our experiment? Well, mostly we leave that to our readers and authors. We hope we've created a journal that was interesting, well-edited, and well-produced, and that the articles we've published have stimulated your own creative ideas about educational technology. I suppose our simple conclusion is that interactive multimedia electronic journals are not easy to produce, but it seems a shame not to take advantage of the computer's communicative power with images, sound, and dynamic feedback. We hope others will continue to explore this publication avenue in a way that gives greater rewards for the editors, publishers, and authors.

From the beginning, we've published IMEJ with a very small team of editors and multimedia creators – largely self-motivated and self-rewarded. I want to express my personal appreciation to Yue-Ling Wong, Ching-Wan Yip, Anne Boyle, and Cameron Kluth. Yue-Ling Wong was the designer of IMEJ's publication template. She also bore primary responsibility for taking raw multimedia material from the authors, requiring that it be focused on ideas and content, refining it to our publication standards, and integrating it tightly into the articles. She was assisted in multimedia production by Ching-Wan Yip, our technical expert, who also maintained IMEJ's servers and software and kept statistics on journal usage. Anne Boyle selflessly served as co-editor, giving us the benefit of her considerable proofreading skills for both form and content of articles. Thanks also to Cameron Kluth, one of my "all-time favorite students," who worked as database manager of the journal.

All of us on the IMEJ team find our interests attracted to other creative projects, and thus we are folding the journal now, with our regrets and thanks. We will leave the journal posted on its current website indefinitely for the benefit of readers and past authors.

Best wishes to all,

Jennifer Burg
Department of Computer Science
Wake Forest University

© 2005, Wake Forest University.