Hi Jo Ann,
I agrre that DE is an important means to have more equity. In my country, where we have a terrible distribution of wealth (with around 50 million living in poverty and 0.4% possesing the same as more than 20% of the population), ED constitutes hope for hundrends of thousands. We are working with underprivileged people and they cherish the opportunity to continue studying their high school.
We are beginning to research some issues. The first work was on best practices on the use of the forum: we made a discourse analysis of the best tutor (in terms of retention and approval rates) and of the worst one. We found very interesting differences (in the first case, lots on human information, pride in working on line, love towards his subject area -Math-, and almost instant response).
We are now working on the characterization of students' Math and written expression entrance profiles (only teens), and the impact our courses have on both types of abilities.
Best, guadalupe