he role of the instructional designer is to help the learners make sense of the new information they get.

A SME is the subject matter expert, not the documentation expert (that's you).

Editor's note: Ed Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed.

I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

I have completed countless online courses. Students provide me with passwords and user names so I can access key documents and online exams. In some instances, I have even contributed to weekly online discussions with other students in the class.

Researchers found that the few who focus primarily on teaching tend to share certain characteristics - including teaching without tenure.

A recent study by the University of Michigan on the work experiences of non-tenure track faculty found that one of their most common reasons for entering the profession was 'a love of teaching.'

Nevertheless, academic culture seems to prioritize research over teaching. Graduate assistants teaching undergraduate classrooms with hundreds of students and infamous practices like 'publish or perish' all point to a system designed to sacrifice quality instruction for research pursuits. As Boyer argued back in 1990, academia and its students would be better served by treating instruction as an equally valuable pursuit.

Online education is booming, but not at elite universities—at least not when it comes to courses for credit.

But UC's ambitions face a series of obstacles. The system has been slow to adopt online instruction despite its deep connections to Silicon Valley. Professors hold unusually tight control over the curriculum, and many consider online education a poor substitute for direct classroom contact. As a result, courses could take years to gain approval.

The goal is to determine whether online courses can be delivered at selective-research-university standards.