Call for Proposals for Special Issue of The American Journal of Distance Education

Call for Proposals for Special Issue of the American Journal of Distance Education (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hajd20/current)

Are you conducting or have you recently completed research on leadership, institutional quality and policy, organizational transformation and/or governmental policies in online/eLearning/distance education If so, please consider responding to a call for proposed articles for Policy, Leadership and Organizational Change in Distance Education, an upcoming special issue of The American Journal of Distance Education.

The American Journal of Distance Education (AJDE) recognizes that many elements relative to distance learning co-exist and must be managed concurrently in any organizational transformation.  Leaders must empower and guide a variety of stakeholders, foster innovation, meet quality-based assessment criteria internally and externally, so creating a synthesis and synergy of all these elements together.  This special issue of AJDE will focus on university distance education leadership, institutional quality and policy, organizational transformation, and governmental policies within the Americas.

Sample Topics

Leadership

1. Changing and innovative models of leadership
2. Changing character of leadership from devoted champions to mainstream administrators
3. Diversity in senior university leadership roles, attributes and approaches

Institutional Policy and Quality

1. Policy developments that lead to flexible and agile university distance education
2. Policy developments that leverage online teaching and learning effectiveness
3. Innovative policy and quality models that address emerging trends in open and distance learning including micro-credentials, OER/OEP adoption, ethics in online delivery, emergency mobilization of online delivery and others.

Transforming Universities

1. Cases of successful (or unsuccessful) strategies for change in university distance education — from vision to implementation to culture change, to impacts
2. Managing organizational culture and values in technology based-organizations
3. Pressing issues of access, accessibility, and diversity

Governmental Policies

1. University-governmental shareholder models
2. Mechanisms for interpretations of State and Federal policies
3. Historical perspectives on successful – and failed – state and national policy initiatives

Submissions Information

A 500-word proposal deadline is November 30, 2020.  Authors of selected proposals will be invited by December 21, 2020 to submit full manuscript for AJDE peer review; invited full manuscripts will be due June 25, 2021.

Highest priority will be given to proposals that report empirical methodologies with identified theoretical frameworks and supported by published scholarly literature.  The adaptability and transference of the research to diverse educational contexts will also be considered.   Manuscripts that consider multiple elements (leadership, quality, policy, transformation, governmental policies) concurrently will also be given priority provided they are supported with empirical data.

Deadline for 500-word proposal is November 30, 2020.  Please submit to kay@americancenterfordistanceeducation.com with responses to the following queries:

1. Title and study purpose (200-word max)
2. Lead or corresponding author contact information, including name, affiliations, email address
3. Methodology (100-word max)
4. Significance (how connected to at least one of the general topics; how contributes to the field) (150-word max)
5. Status of the study (IRB, etc.) (50-word max)

Important Dates

Proposals due November 30, 2020 to kis106@psu.edu

Invitations to authors December 21, 2020

Manuscripts due June 2021

Anticipated publication March 2022

Editors

Kay Shattuck: Associate Editor, The American Journal of Distance Education, and Don Olcott, Jr.:  University of Maryland Global Campus

For inquiries about this special AJDE issue, please contact Kay Shattuck kis106@psu.edu