You sense, I'm sure, that I approached this topic with some unease. I've come away from my interviews feeling quite differently. Paths lead out of my nightmare, productive ones, non-authoritarian ones that can turn these frights into teachable moments. Teachers can harness the energy in incivility and turn it to a good end. We've known this was true of conflict, debate, controversy for a long time, but we've been inclined to forget it. David Johnson reminds us of the long and distinguished history of "academic controversy" in this issue's ERIC Tracks column.

There's a partnership in a good debate. Indeed, as Pankaj Saksena's PRAXIS article suggests, "partnership" serves as a powerful metaphor for faculty and students working together in a course. Similarly, Madeleine Picciotto's article on "whole-class collaborations" draws a vivid picture of the excitement learning together can release.

Tom Creed, the Forum's contributing editor on technology and pedagogy, takes this issue's TECHPED column to discuss the importance of selecting software that allows you to structure your students' interactions with course material (and with each other) even in the "virtual space" of the World Wide Web. There, too, partnership and collaboration overwhelm unproductive conflict.

And finally, to move out of the shadows and momentarily into the conceptual light, William Palmer revisits William Glasser's "five conditions of quality," guideposts for reviewing both our efforts and our processes.

The symbiotic partnership between the printed periodical you hold in your hand and its site on the Web also continues as a growing resource. Last week alone, there were over 6,000 "hits" on the site. In support of this issue, subscribers will find posted there useful handouts, a bibliography of sources and additional contacts for the lead article, "Teaching and Crowd Control." As usual, Tom Creed's "Virtual Communal Space" offers stimulating additional material and contacts that demonstrate the ideas and concepts discussed in his column.

With this issue, the Forum reaches thousands of new readers whose campuses have established site licenses to make the publication available to all their faculty. Welcome! Remember that for you the Web site and e-mail addresses in the online Web edition are "hot links" through which you can immediately access additional materials or post a message to an author. You can also post your reactions to the discussion section of the Forum's Web site or send me immediate feedback. You can also "flame" me, of course, but that takes us back to "incivilities" and we've already covered that. Haven't we?