Figuring out what's necessary and what's not necessary never proves as easy as we'd like. Take the new technologies and online education, for example. Necessary or "la mode"? Tom Rocklin's TECHPED column will examine this particular example more thoroughly in the next issue of the Forum. But Tom's discussion will apply largely to those who still have a choice. In many places, for good or ill, the future arrived yesterday and online learning (or, more precisely, online instruction) is a fact of life. The United Kingdom is one such place. Everyone has heard of the Open University, for example, and its many successes. An instructive shadow side always hovers near success, and online instruction in England has its share of shadows. In their article, "Collaborative Learning in the Virtual Classroom," Julie Ann Richardson, of Kings College, London, and Anthony Turner, of Canterbury Christ Church University College, report on some disturbing findings about online discussions and offer a set of guidelines for improving the situation.

Mary Bold's cover article, "When Students Feel Stupid," surely deals with an essential element in the teaching and learning dynamic. Feeling stupid doesn't work well as a spur to learning, at least for many of us, and certainly it doesn't encourage an open, energetic classroom. Bold's "don't criticize" will seem weak and wrong-headed to some readers until they learn how students eventually begin to critique themselves. Finding ways to embed assessment in learning rather than have students regard it only as an external judge of learning has been a pedagogical goal of good teachers for a long time. Bold's approach, beginning in something social, seems strongly and importantly linked to something cognitive.

Are courses necessary? Grades? Workshops? Laura Border's DEVELOPER'S DIARY column mounts a defense of the workshop as a useful way to get down to cases. Workshops have been maligned in some quarters as light-weight tea parties for those unwilling to read a book and learn the theory. Laura's column reminds us that a lot of learning lies in the doing and that the real value of workshops lies in the fact that they are process-oriented, and refute the old adage that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.

Teachers teach each other in workshops. They also teach each other over coffee, in chance encounters, in all kinds of situations wherever they come together and talk about teaching. Craig Nelson's CARNEGIE CHRONICLE recounts how he learned a number of important things about teaching from colleagues far removed from his discipline (biology). Craig urges readers not only to become familiar with the increasingly sophisticated and research-based writing on teaching and learning, but to contribute to this ongoing inquiry into our common enterprise by reflecting on and writing about their own teaching. There is a growing number of outlets for this work besides The National Teaching and Learning Forum. (But a little self-promotion here seems appropriate, don't you think?)

As we exit reviewing the contents of this issue of the Forum and the theme of sorting out the necessary from the unnecessary, it's appropriate to note Linc. Fisch's AD REM . . . column "On Entrances." Talk all we want about process and content, if we don't start off on the right foot, our instruction may never fall in step with our students' learning.

Wishing us all a productive and satisfying new year (because who knows what happiness is?) . . .