Happy 2013 and welcome to the eighteen issue of JEO. The papers published in JEO serve as benchmarks of quality scholarly contributions to the fields of elearning, blended, and mobile learning, and continue across academic disciplines, national and virtual borders.

2012 was an exciting year for us at JEO. We are delighted to say that we have had an exceptional number of manuscript submissions this year which has resulted in the publishing of six papers in the January issue of JEO with an acceptance rate of 25%. We thank all of our authors and encourage our readers and contributors to continue to submit manuscripts for consideration in upcoming issues of JEO.

There are some interesting patterns that emerge in the articles presented. Support services that deserve a second look, and a deeper look at social media and mobile technologies for instructional delivery, all point to ways that online learning can rise to a new level of richness and opportunity for educators.

The first article, addresses academic honesty and the challenges and compliance issues it presents for online courses offers strategies and institutional strategies that have proven to be successful in minimizing violations and reducing dishonesty and plagiarism. The second article examines online learning activities through new communication technologies and focuses on the five C's of social media: communication, collaboration, community, creativity, and convergence. The third article looks at faculty use of student support services, particularly with respect to online students at risk and what the implications are for student retention. The fourth article takes an international perspective and explores teaching via mobile technologies in Malaysia. Their study assesses teachers' technology acceptance and readiness and sheds some light on the potential of using a mobile device as a pedagogical tool. The fifth study investigates differences in the level of computer literacy and the amount of implementation of ICT in teaching and learning for teachers in computerized schools versus teachers in non-computerized schools to examine the connection between teacher attributes and accessibility and what inferences can be made from the research.

Last, as has become somewhat of a custom, the sixth article provides information on eLearning and faculty professional development opportunities. This article researches an Online Teaching Certificate Class, a free open year-long class focused on pedagogy and tool choice, as a viable delivery method for novice online instructors to help them develop technology skills and a strong sense of online instructor presence.

• Patricia McGee's Supporting Academic Honesty in Online Courses points out that insuring academic honesty is a challenge for traditional classrooms, but more so for online courses. With the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) the requirements for online course providers to reduce opportunities to cheat and plagiarize, it is more important than ever to explore possible remedies. This article examines why students cheat, types of dishonesty in online courses, and strategies that have proven to be successful to minimize violations and institutional strategies.
  
• Hershey H. Friedman and Linda Weiser Friedman examine Using Social Media Technologies to Enhance Online Learning and go beyond the newest Web 2.0 technologies and software to explore the subtleties and distinctions of social media. The authors point to the extensive use of social media and pressure from higher education administration to control costs. They pose that, while many academics may still resist the use of social media, the evidence is there that online education has the ability to lower costs and improve the quality of education.
  
• Rosalie (Rose) J. Russo-Gleicher's research in her article Qualitative Insights into Faculty Use of Student Support Services with Online Students at Risk: Implications for Student Retention shares ways that faculty can impact retention rates of online students who are at risk. So many students face many challenges that can put them at risk, so this study, while small, could still provide important clues to help students if faculty know what resources are available to them and to their students and what the consequences could be for under-utilization of these resources for online students.
  
• Issham Ismail, SitiFatimah Bokhare, Siti Norbaya Azizan, and Nizuwan Azman conducted the research for Teaching via Mobile Phone: a Case Study on Malaysian Teachers' Technology Acceptance and Readiness Readiness to shed light on the potential of using the device as pedagogical tool. But teachers need to receptive to using them and be sufficiently trained to include them in their teaching, so it's important to look at teachers' perceptions on technology and readiness for m-learning be studied. The study findings helped identify technology acceptance among school teachers from the components of motivation, training and courses, and supports and facilities.
  
• Noga Magen-Nagar and Bracha Peled's Characteristics of Israeli School Teachers in Computer-based Learning Environments investigated whether there were differences in the level of computer literacy and the attitudes of 811 teachers, 402 of which were from computerized schools in comparison to 409 teachers in non-computerized schools. The research findings show that teachers from the computerized school sample are more familiar with ICT, tend to use ICT than teachers in the non-computerized school sample and make recommendations for helping teachers in the non-computerized schools to get comfortable and have access to ICT.
  
• Lisa Lane's An Open, Online Class to Prepare Faculty to Teach Online shares a study of faculty engaged in an open online class to see if this could be an effective model for faculty development. Participants who earned a certificate through full participation indicated the achievement of their personal learning goals and increased confidence in their ability to build online classes around their pedagogy rather than the technology tools. The results of the study indicate that an open, online class or MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) may be an effective model for faculty development in online teaching.

Journal of Educators Online is published at www.thejeo.com in January and July of each year.  have a scholarly paper you would like considered for peer review publication, please contact the editor, Ruth Gannon Cook at rgannonc@depaul.edu.  Committed to excellence, the Journal of Educators Online is disseminated online without charge as a contribution to the body of research on topics related to online education and as a useful resource for educators, students, administrators and policy makers in all disciplines.

The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 10, Number 1, January 2013