The purpose of this study is to explore the impact and relative importance of course content and the role of the instructor on measures of effectiveness for on-line courses. Items from a standard student evaluation questionnaire are used to form measures of the quality of course content, the instructor's role in facilitating the course, and a number of 'global' effectiveness measures. Results from a number of stepwise regression analyses suggest that the impact and importance of these two dimensions of teaching effectiveness vary depending on the specific global effectiveness measure being assessed. Generally, both can be seen as strong predictors of global effectiveness of on-line courses, explaining from 0.569 to 0.743 of the variance in different global effectiveness measures. Further, the study identifies those standard questions used to form the course content and instructor's role indices that are of greatest importance in predicting global teaching effectiveness of on-line courses.Recent years have seen a tremendous increase in university courses taught over the Internet. Clark (1999) reported that over two-thirds of the 3,200 accredited colleges and graduate schools in the U.S. offer such courses. In 1999, Fornnaciari & Forte reported that 40 accredited U.S. business schools offered complete MBA programmes through distance education. More recently, U.S. News and World Report surveyed 2,000 institutions and noted their top 25 on-line programmes in the U.S. Although on-line education is here to stay, a key question is whether this new form of teaching can offer a quality learning experience. In describing the development of on-line courses and programmes, Marchese (2000) stated that "the action today, and most of the press coverage, goes to much larger-scale endeavours-institutional and corporate based-often for profit, aimed at capturing market share and creating new revenue streams. There is lots of striving and 'reach' out there, but little attention to 'richness' and learning itself"(p.4).This study seeks to determine the importance of two dimensions in the delivery of high quality on-line MBA courses: the content of the course and the role of the instructor. The research question addressed, as suggested by the title of this article is, "which is most important in achieving effectiveness in on-line courses, the instructor or the content of the course being offered?" Answering this question is important for a number of reasons. First, many

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This study sought to determine the effect of class size on the evaluation of teaching effectiveness for on-line courses using a standard student evaluation survey instrument. The data set consists of all MBA courses taught online during an academic year at a large, regional Midwestern university in the U.S. Several simple regression analyses are performed with class size as the independent variable. Dependent variables analysed were global course effectiveness and summated indices representing 'building blocks' of online effectiveness. These include course content, instructor support, course structure, student-to-student interaction and instructor to-student interaction. Results indicate no significant relationship between class size and global course effectiveness. In addition, class size showed some significance in predicting instructor support and course structure. Unexpectedly the direction of this association was positive suggesting that larger classes lead to higher levels of instructor support and greater perceived course structure. A comparison to traditional courses is also provided.

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The world of advertising is changing at frenetic pace, especially with electronic communications, direct and interactive marketing, and social media. Keeping pace with these changes is challenging in that we have entered previously uncharted waters. We hope that you find this issue of the journal useful for illuminating important areas of change as well as promoting change in advertising education. This special issue contains research that was presented in the Education Track of the 2008 Direct and Interactive Marketing Research Summit, held in Las Vegas in October. It represents the first fruits of the partnership between JAE and the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation's Research Summit. We hope that this inaugural issue of this partnership is the first of many that captures important changes in advertising education flowing from today's evolving digital and interactive marketing environment. Although it seems impossible to comprehensively address change, the articles contained here cover much ground. The first, "Seizing the Opportunity: Enhancing Creativity in Direct and Digital Marketing," exhorts and provides useful directions for helping students to enhance creativity in direct and digital marketing. The "Enhancing Students' Segmentation Skills and Targeting Knowledge Using the Gains Tables, Lift Charts, and the Gini Coefficient" provides a means for improving students' segmentation and targeting decisions. The techniques discussed will also assist students to better incorporate accountability when determining the most promising target audience(s). The next two articles provide exciting approaches to experiential learning. The first, "Experiential Learning in Capstone Courses Through the Great Case Debate," incorporates a debate style assignment within a campaigns course and the second, "The Google Online Marketing Challenge: Fostering Student Learning of Search Advertising," details the development of the Google Online Marketing Challenge. This global competition is being used to allow students and professors to gain first-hand experience with search advertising.