As a first time student enrolled in an online course, I am dismayed by the total lack of the instructor's input. She merely feeds us the publisher's materials, has a teaching assistant grade the homework and pulls her tests from the publisher's test bank. I could teach this course, easily, myself.

Dismayed.

Call me a "resister", as the article terms it. Online education is a sham and a fake. I have significant experience with online education. It is not education. There is no "teaching" or explanation, just self study. Silly things are graded like participation in discussions, and homework is often graded despite the fact the solutions manuals are all available online for students. Many online courses are taught by for-profit schools whose key motivation is to never fail students and to keep their tuition dollars flowing in. Even traditional schools' online courses are silly. The teacher has no way to know who is taking the exams. Exams are open book. Let's all start calling it the sham that it really is.

I am sad to hear the experiences of learners like ccarson and softshellcrab. But I have to say, from my experience as a student in an Ivy League school on the ground I had experiences like that. You can't judge an entire way of teaching and learning from these experiences.

I have been teaching graduate school online since 1999. I engage actively with learners one on one, in small groups and in the class. I use meeting technologies as well as the Blackboard discussion. Learners work independently or collaboratively, depending on the assignment. I review and make detailed comments on their writing in assignments that require them to reasearch and draw on multiple scholarly sources. There is typically not one textbook, so "publisher's materials" or "open book exams" are non-existent. Even discussion assignments are submitted in full APA style and require references to the assigned and other scholarly readings. Higher order critical and creative thinking, original analysis, are required.

And if they don't do the work to a level of satisfaction that meets course objectives, they fail!

When these learners complete the program, they have competencies relevant to 21c life-- they can communicate, collaborate, access and integrate information from diverse sources using electronic libraries. It is an exciting way to teach and learn and it is the wave of the future so we need to gain the skills needed to make these educational experiences consistently meaningful.

It's surely not the medium that makes the big difference but other factors like the content, the motivation of students and instructors, and even such things as the expectation about what makes a "correct" or "good" answer. Softshellcrab seems to teach a subject that requires students to solve a problem and come up with the one correct solution. And every class depends on self-study unless you want the students to simply absorb and repeat everything you tell them in class.

Working with online instruction requires different techniques. An instructor online cannot usually look at a student's face and see that she isn't grasping the point, for example, or when she has fallen asleep. I can see why instructors would miss this type of face-to-face communication; online feedback is both less immediate and in some cases more direct. But a lecture can be truly engaging or enormously incomprehensible even for the student who moves to the front row to try to understand it all. Online learning can also reap huge results or can suffer from another set of equally mind-numbing problems.

I have to agree with jsalmons and bghansel. It's not the fact that a school is online or on-ground that matters. It's the quality of the educator that matters. I, too, have gone to and taught in Ivy League schools and found them to be a mixed bag, just as I've found online schools to be a mixed bag.

Yes, some for-profit schools only care about money and all students pass and get a degree. That needs to be stopped. But that doesn't mean all for-profit schools are that way. I've worked at NFP schools and FP and found some of the NFP are just as bad about not letting students fail for any reason and I teach nursing, which chills the blood when a student is going to be caring for a human life.

I think softshellcrab has a few issues with online education for reasons we don't know. Whether it was a personal problem at an online or something else, one can't tar the whole world because one person is bad and the same is true of online education. Globalizing feelings about one situation to all situations isn't healthy and doesn't reflect reality.

There is a plethora of research that believes what softshellcrab has written. The final outcome is that online education is actually more effective at educating than on-ground.

Yes, softshellcrab, discussion questions are the backbone of online courses. Are you telling me they don't play a role in on-ground education? Are you telling me that only talking-head lectures educate? Is there something wrong with students doing self-studying? Haven't you seen lecture content in online courses? I'm puzzled as to why you think critical thinking, Socratic reasoning/questioning, and constructivism are bad or can't be done online, but can on-ground.

The most (Stress THE MOST)primary issue with distance education is the degree of affective education taught. Cognitive education can and has been taught via distance/online for over 30 years in one form or another (Teleconference or "Talking Heads" at the beginning and now to 100% online).

However, if we go back to Bloom et al. (1956) and reassess for our current assessment outcomes, the most difficult means of education is the affective domain. We do a poor job of providing affective education when using online education because by its very nature, affective education is through interaction of individuals. When we do not have the interaction, how do we know what level of affective education is taught.

As we develop better means of assessing affective education, we will know to what degree the affective is taught via online. We can use SKYPE, WIMBA or other "video" based education, but what we lose is the subtle differences of students and their interactions with others that makes it difficult to determine their level of character (highest level of affect).

Bill Gates may think we will have less seated instruction in the future (see another Chronicle issue elsewhere), but the backlash against online will be in the form of those who cannot interact and thus not obtain jobs (except in the places where it wont matter because none have any affect in that place).

The bottom line is that we are losing a major portion of our education system in a pure online education format. Until we recognize how to better teach affective education with online, and more importantly assess that type of education, we will have major issues not only in higher education, but also in industry/business.

And this is an open invitation for Bill Gates to discuss this issue.

I need to correct an error in what I posted at 0944. I didn't mean the research supports softshellcrab! Far from it. What I meant to write was:

"There is a plethora of research that BELIES what softshellcrab has written. The final outcome is that online education is actually more effective at educating than on-ground."

Please forgive the caps, dear people. Not shouting. Just trying emphasize what I meant to write and we can't use bold or italics. I do hope I didn't offend anyone.

As always, it is the quality of the teaching that makes on-line as well as classroom courses successful learning experiences. Quality on-line teaching is harder than regular classroom teaching, but poor on-line teaching is easier than regular classroom teaching.

"Quality on-line teaching is harder than regular classroom teaching, but poor on-line teaching is easier than regular classroom teaching."

Goodeyes, you said it!

But can I make it more specific - "Quality on-line teaching is harder (taking more time, e.g.)than regular classroom teaching of the same quality (in achieving the same extent of satisfaction in students, e.g.)?"

Healthy discussion. However, no one has mentioned the preparation required for quality online instruction. Some building blocks of good online programs are high quality/targeted content, flexible tools for development and delivery, engaging and interactive design, attentive and responsive instructors during the class, self motivated learners, and as always outcomes-based curriculum.

As the last two comments mentioned, it is easier to fail with online delivery. A lecturer can pull a class back from the brink of boredom by adjusting on the fly.

With 20 years of online/CD-ROM delivery experience, I have seen many highly effective well designed online programs. This is not an either/or discussion.

Are people really going to stand in front of the online education tidal wave and say it doesn't work? Why not surf and leverage its awesome power.

I know facts can be such inconvenient annoyances to individuals like 'softshellcrab' and others who prefer to repeat their uninformed opinions endlessly. However, for those who prefer facts, here is the most comprehensive research to date: a US Department of Education meta-analysis of research sufficiently rigorous to be included.
---------------------
Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (2009). A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. Key findings include:

1. Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. Learning outcomes for students who engaged in online learning exceeded those of students receiving face-to-face instruction, with an average effect size of +0.24 favoring online conditions. The mean difference between online and face-to-face conditions across the 51 contrasts is statistically significant at the p < .01 level.

2. Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction. The mean effect size in studies comparing blended with face-to-face instruction was +0.35, p < .001. This effect size is larger than that for studies comparing purely online and purely face-to-face conditions, which had an average effect size of +0.14, p < .05.

3. Few rigorous research studies of the effectiveness of online learning for K-12 students have been published. The systematic search of the research literature found just five experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies comparing the learning effects of online versus face-to-face instruction for K-12 students. As such, caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population because the results are for the most part based on studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

The full report can be obtained here.

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#edtech">http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#edtech

In response to drrussporter: drruss writes "We do a poor job of providing affective education when using online education because by its very nature, affective education is through interaction of individuals."

I work in a seminary where affective content is significant and where we are beginning to see some enthusiasm among faculty for the effectiveness of online education. (There is no question that our students want online courses.) As I watch younger students coming in -- and I have two teenagers at home -- I am increasingly of the opinion that online technology can contribute positively to the interaction of individuals and thus to affective education as well. Our seminary has a long way to go; we are nowhere near to reaching the interactive potential of online education. But I remain convinced that we are taking steps in the right direction by developing online courses and using online technology as one way to bring students into more frequent interaction.

OK, so where can I get greater support in developing online course pedagogy? We've developed our program from examples available in 2000, and have since added additional methods. Some courses from our faculty have been hits--and others featured a gurgling sound as quality drained away. But it's been development in a vacuum. We do OK overall, but where can I go to get better, and to assist my colleagues to do the same?

Charles Morgan

cmorgan- there are dozens of excellent small companies who build custom content for clients. Some actually build for higher ed specifically. www.ASTD.ORG or http://www.elearningguild.com/ will have lists of vendors. Not all custom providers will be appropriate. I have worked with one company who builds content for Higher Ed, and has developed some top quality content. www.logicbay.com

You can find vendors who will work with you to help you develop more self sufficiency.

I would also encourage you to contact UPCEA who has a lot of member schools with significant experience.

@Charles,

This is a great question. The most successful examples create and successfully manage "design teams" as follows.

Each design team consists of (a) a relatively recently educated instructional designer (they often graduate with masters in "Learning and Technology" from leading institutions in this area (Indiana, Arizona State, others), (b) a platform specialist, and (c) an instructor.

Roughly, the learning technologist is responsible for constructing and validating learning objects (objectives, activities, assessments, resource and classification properties, etc.) that are pedagogically sound for the intended audience (validity is context specific), the platform specialist serves a production role getting the content into the platform with a sound and consistent look and feel, and the instructor (or small team of instructors) serves as the "SME" or subject matter expert.

The SME is responsible for determining what is to be taught and to what performance standards; the other team members are responsible for structuring the content and appropriate assessments to achieve the SME's objectives in ways that are consistent with and exploit modern learning and measurement sciences.

Typically, one learning technologist and one platform specialist can serve on a dozen or more design teams at any given time. It works best when course development follows a firm calendar, typically about six weeks is optimum.

Doing the production math, the instructional technologist and the platform specialist can lead the development of 60-80 courses per year, more if the course is a revision (10 courses at a time, eight six-week cycles per year). (NB: the SME is virtually always the holdup; they need incentives to do the work on time.) Sometimes it is necessary to have more than one platform specialist; this is an advanced clerical role that can bog down with rich content and interactivity. None of this is hypothetical. One relatively small independent college recently produced more than 100 courses this way in less than a year's time.

I hope this helps. The key here is to shift your process from one in which individual instructors "roll their own" course on an unspecified calendar by an unscientific and managed method, to one in which content is managed with precision to modern standards.

There is no loss of intellectual freedom in this process. I mention this only because you will hear this cry from some of your instructors. To the contrary, each SME's (professors) educational goals can be met with greater precision, less variance across students, and with greater certainty and levels of proof. No rational educator should object to that.

@ Charles,

I neglected to mention that you can outsource this process but, if the will is there, my experiences have led me to conclude that developing your own capabilities is preferable to outsourcing. In the long run, I see better results.

The final product may or may not be a sound but the motivation and pride that comes from ownership is an important factor, especially when it comes to gathering information to drive revisions as the courses are taught.

You may want to look outside for guidance for developing your internal design teams and in defining the role descriptions. If you do, be certain that the consultants have senior expertise in both learning *and* measurement sciences and have been around the block many times. Since this entire approach represents a sea change in academic culture, the internal politics can be problematic.

Robert W Tucker

I don't understand the past few comments above, where people (I assume very well intentioned) try to share ideas for developing better online courses.

Online courses are inherently a sham. They cannot be made "good". It is the worseso because they are so often offered by the same for-profit schools such as Devry, Kaplan, Everest, Phoenix, Indiana Wesleyan, etc. that are themselves sham schools that seek only to soak up tuition dollars, and refuse to fail students, and hand out good grades like Halloween candy.

I have a great deal of experience teaching both online and on campus. With online classes there are too many inherent problems that cannot be corrected:

1. There is no teaching, only self-study
2. You don't know who is taking the exams or doing the other work.
3. Because there is no in-class meeting, the teachers tend to grade silly soft things like participation discussion and homework. But participation discussion is a silly and empty way to earn a grade, and homework solutions (unless the teacher creaates his or her own) are available for purchase on the internet.
4. Exams must be open book, even where this is a bad idea.

Now, I am talking about the current state of mainline online schools. I don't mean hybrids, where the students go to the school or a testing center to take exams. These would be much better, but they are not really fully online. And I am sure some teachers solve part, but not all, of the above problems by doing their own homework questions (I admire you if you create lots and lots of your own homework questions). But what I say pertains to more than 90% of the current online classes being offered out there. Please people don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about. I have taught dozens of online classes and between 100 and 150 on-campus classes. I know! And I can tell you my on campus classes at my "real" school are done well, with real teaching and we fail many students when they don't do well. Every online class I have ever taught was a silly joke where my job for a for-profit school was to hand out grades in a class taught at a third grade level.

It is all a scam. I strongly believe that the government should require any online course to be labeled as such on transcripts, and that any degree where 40% or more of the courses were online also be labeled as such with an asterisk and a warning that this person did not get a real degree with real classes.

@softshell,

As others have said, one can only conclude, since you too seem well intentioned, that your experiences with what there is to mean by "online education" have been impoverished.

This is understandable. A good deal of what passes for online education is deplorable. This is especially true in public universities where each instructor, most of whom are ignorant of learning and measurement sciences, is solely responsible for developing his own course lacking practical experience and understanding of the requisite theoretical and empirical issues.

Let me respond to your list of five points, taking the perspective of online courses functioning in the upper quartile with respect to contemporary standards of quality -- not showcase courses, just those that were developed and maintained by knowledgeable experts.

1. There is no teaching, only self-study.
FALSE -- These courses are richly interactive, horizontally and vertically, and involve whatever forms and amounts of teaching activities as are beneficial to the course. I do recognize, however, that I don't know exactly what you mean by the generic term, "teaching."

2. You don't know who is taking the exams or doing the other work.
FALSE -- First, is the question, "compared to what?" It is naive to think that this claim represents an empty set with respect to face-to-face instruction. I would recommend a review of the empirical research on cheating in traditional environments. As for the online environment, most horizontal learning activities engage learners in ways that "faking" is no more likely, and probably less likely, than it is in traditional environments. A number of studies have been conducted on this subject. Look at them.

3. Because there is no in-class meeting, the teachers tend to grade silly soft things like participation discussion and homework. But participation discussion is a silly and empty way to earn a grade, and homework solutions (unless the teacher creates his or her own) are available for purchase on the internet.
FALSE -- I'm not certain what you are "grading" in your classes, nor do I have any validity measures on your grading instruments. That said, non-trivial distinctions aside, anything you can grade in a physical classroom can be graded in an equivalent manner in the virtual classroom. It is done every day.

4. Exams must be open book, even where this is a bad idea.
FALSE -- Where did you get this silly idea? Exams can be open-book, closed-book, proctored, even witnessed and notarized if you please. Of course, my suggestion would be for you to think about developing better assessments than the multiple-choice test questions you seem to be referring to. Books -- open or closed -- are irrelevant to authentic assessments of performance. Examinations that rest on enforcement and security are generally (not always, I grant) a bad idea because they lack authenticity and transfer to the desired post-classroom proficiencies of the learner.

You seem to equate online learning with for-profits (at least in the majority). This is false as well. The University of Phoenix, for example, has more students in physical classrooms, such as you advocate, than it does in online only environments. I would estimate that roughly 75% of the online learning population today is taking its courses from public and independent colleges and universities. Some of the largest and most successful for-profits, have no or few online courses. I'm not certain where you get this false believe but no one seems to be able to divorce you from it and I have seen several individuals try.

Finally, you still say, "It is all a scam." I note that you completely ignored the findings of the Department of Education meta-analysis that considered hundreds of research studies contrasting online with on ground classrooms (summarized in #11 above). Why do you continue to do that? Are you saying that the thousands of professors who teach online each day, and endorse it, and the hundreds of competent researchers who have studied this issue, and found online superior, and the Department of Education scientists who did the meta-analysis, are all wrong . . . and you are right? Wow!

Interesting discussion; firstly, I'm coming at this from a UK perspective - I work in a School of Computing & have taught both online, face-to-face & blended (i.e. a combination of the two).

As others have commented, I think that, though softshell has clearly taught a lot online - he/she has had a fairly limited experience of what can be done online. I'm also not sure which subject they're teaching - I think that some are much easier to teach (and learn!) from an online perspective than others.

I also note the point they make saying that a course that has exams in an exam centre isn't fully online - I'm not sure I'd agree with this - I think you can have courses that are 100% taught online - but still have exams in an monitored environment; I agree - sometimes it can be hard to set an assessment that really tests the students without setting a formal exam. But, equally, with care - you can set assessments that have plenty of personal input e.g. the discussions that have been dismissed can, in computing, be used to discuss the software that's going to be built; other students can take on the role of client & ask how a particular task would be done by the software; can pretend to be novice computer users etc. (We do the same in face to face classes - other students have to role play clients/typical users etc)

Yes, there are some things that it's really hard to teach (and, more to the point, learn) online - we're looking at moving some things to a more blended teaching, so that we can get students in - to meet them, to enable them to meet each other, to introduce complex subjects in a face to face setting. We're lucky - the UK is so much smaller than the US that even though we're right on the edge, it's pretty easy to get to from most of the rest within a day (remote Scottish Islands aside)

The other point that softshell makes I find interesting - they've stressed 'self study' - don't most degrees - however they're taught, expect students to do extra reading, to do research - to find out answers to those things the lecturer hasn't covered? Sure, in online learning, by its very nature, you have to do a bit more of that - but quite often that's why people have selected to study online - they want that extra flexibility.

In the UK, the main provider of online learning (at degree level) is the OPen University (I guess it's similar to your University of Phoenix); it's not 100% distance - mostly online, but some courses still use paper - as they do have summer schools / local tutors for students to meet face to face - but it's essentially distance. It also regularly gets some of the best student feedback in the country. Employers often rank OU students highly, as they've demonstrated that they can work largely independently - and not have to rely on someone to hold their hand through the whole degree scheme (which some on campus students appear to expect)

Yes, I agree with some of your points, softshell, some online teaching can be dire; as can some face to face; just as some online students can have a wonderful experience.
(By the way, I, like others, would love to know what you consider to be 'teaching')

@ betterschools

In regard to your inclusion of a "relatively recently educated instructional designer" on your ideal design team, I see nothing in your description below that disqualifies "less" recently educated instructional designers from serving just as effectively.

"Roughly, the learning technologist is responsible for constructing and validating learning objects (objectives, activities, assessments, resource and classification properties, etc.) that are pedagogically sound for the intended audience (validity is context specific)."

@abichel,

You are right. I feared reprisal when I wrote that, and justly so. What I should have said is that you need someone who understands the modern learning and measurement sciences and, specifically, how to translate this knowledge into instructional designs that fully exploit the technology/platform of choice. This might very well be a retired ID person. My goal, wrongly executed, was to ensure that the person didn't secure the services of an ID person who hasn't kept abreast of the fast pace of change in the last decade.

Robert W Tucker

As I see it, all learning is basically self-study. Many students in f2f classes develop an extraordinary ability to look like they are listening, when their minds are actually drifting. Some classroom professors don't allow students to use laptops to take notes in classrooms because the students are often reading email or surfing the internet instead of, or in addition to, taking notes. The point is that most learning situations require the learner to voluntarily pay attention, and focus their mind on the lesson, and to learn willingly, so in that sense it is all really self-study.

As softshellcrab suggested, one tough part of total online education is assessment. How do you know that the student registered is the student writing the papers, giving the comments, taking the test, etc. Of course this problem also exists to some extent in f2f classes, as students can cheat on tests and papers in classroom settings as well. (http://chronicle.com/article/High-Tech-Cheating-on-Homew/64857) There are various techniques to try to reduce cheating in online education, just as there are in f2f. I like the idea of including a proctored assessment in online classes because it at least provides a measurement of the student's learning with some assurance that the result does indeed represent the student who is getting the credit. I have also seen people advocate for the use of Skype to monitor students taking online exams. Maybe other people who are discussing this article know more about this, and how assessment can be handled to minimize cheating.

As the article is soliciting issues in online classes, I should mention the issue of balancing effort between students in collaborative, project-based learning scenarios. Maybe there are techniques for controlling that as well, but I have seen comments where a student has complained that collaborative learning is code for one student doing the work of many. Again, maybe others in the discussion know more about this issue.

Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net

I greatly appreciated the video explaining Twitter.

As far what issues this raises, the major issue of this particular videoclip to myself is what is left unsaid,namely, we know the course taught is a graduate course, but in what?

These discussions appear to promote a given technology (ie., Twitter) but say little to nothing about their subject appropriateness. While I can imagine soundbites--sorry, "miniblogs" of 140 some characters--may be a good way to communicate piecemeal information of a rather perfunctory nature (which is likely on my syllabus already) there is no way they are communicating at the level required of, say, an organic chemistry class (not that someone isn't experimenting, and not that I am not thinking how, but both are far from widespread acceptance and implementation).

For the latter the parties are required to write chemical structures, use polysyllabic technical terminology (student 'underlanguage,' ie., bastardization of correct and precise terminology being highly discouraged as it erodes the very knowledge base we faculties are to built in the course of chemical education), and articulate nouns rather than indeterminate pronouns as students themselves fail to do even in lecture-hall questions (example: "How do we know that IT reacts at an angle with IT when IT collides?"--such laxity lacks precision of thought as well as language to the extent that it is a failure to adequately communicate and propagates error accordingly if left unchecked, including health and safety errors when transplanted into a laboratory setting).

My experience with email question/answers themselves is no better. Since I do not teach a distance class I indicate that students are to register requests in person (what are office hours for?) and not hide behind email which is a poor substitute to getting questions answered--in my field, which is my very point, namely, that one technology does not fit all. Is Johnny truly shy? At least structure the organization to assist him to not hide behind this his entire academic career while saying we are turning out "leaders" for tomorrow.

As far as recent news regarding that smartphones be required to answer student questions, not, say at the level of technical content but rather low-level questions for clarifaction of assignments, etc., there are a host of separate reasons apart from impossibility of content communication in the sciences that themselves make this practice abhorent, some of which include (1) students are responsible for listening and getting the assignment when given, in other words, the expectation that students pay attention and take notes and ask on-the-spot is an expectation of the highest order when it comes to fundamentals of education in its broadest sense, (2) there are times that ambiguity is inherent to an assignment, deliberately built into it, be it in homework problems or reading assignments, the expectation being that students are expected to deal with ambiguity to the best of their ability (and to discern just what those developing abilities are) and that the educative process not be reduced to "tell me exactly what to do and what to know and I will do/know it exactly"--real life including the research laboratory is not a textbook world nor should a textbood world be the examplar of the world beyond undergraduate education; ambiguities require that students exercise their own judgment, part and parcel of education in any field, or one would hope lest education become so reductionistic that it is reduced to rote memorization (although the latter is emphasized in many language-like disciplines including mathematics and the sciences and is not to be wholesale dismissed as many in fact do).

Even in those cases where I can imagine some uses of technology in my discipline, I nonetheless have to seriously question whether those uses merely supplement current time-tested practices, or whether those uses entirely supplant by substituting for them. Thus far, I have yet to see that serious students taught by teachers having serious expectations have much to gain from technology when it comes to complex content knowledge, any more than students have to gain by showing them movies of moving molecules in all their initial although short-lived aha! factor. The image is captivating, yes, but the world comes to us through language, and unpacking the deception of miniblogs takes more language and not less, or so I would think.

And this latter is best done in person with the full accoutrements of language available and not with technological tools that effectively truncate language. At least in my field, at least with my students, at least at the institution at which I teach with its own set of idiosyncracies. Your mileage may vary, depending, but let us consider the discipline from which we speak and weigh the utility of technologies (for they are various and sundry) accordingly.

PS. "That can still be tough--some resisters, according to one online-training expert, fear they won't be able to display their expertise in online classes."

Being labelled as a "resister" borders on the offensive and bespeaks an agenda on the part of the accuser, failing as it does to finely divide the word of truth (not that a miniblog could aspire to rise to the level of such). Not using technology does not in itself make a "resister." Inappropriate and/or overuse of a technology ill-suited to the complexities of a particular subject material can, however, bespeak anything from the "displaying" inherent to an amateur, a dilettante, faddist, fanatic, or peacock, among others.

Not only does on-line education fit better with some types of teaching and teachers, it is also better for some types of learners. Passive learners, versus active learners, tend to have a harder time with on-line courses (is that simply a matter of motivation, perhaps). Some learners want the faculty to open their lid and pour in the knowledge, i.e. lecture based education. For the foreseeable future, there will continue to be educators and learners that want that format. At the same time, there are growing numbers of "active" learners that are really aggressive about seeking out new knowledge. They want access, convenience, and quality. Many educators can serve those learners in an on-line format - others can do it F2F. Faculty that dabble in on-line education or are forced into on-line education often try to simply move their same F2F course material into the online format and it doesn't often translate very well. Hopefully, those that want to have an engaging course in the on-line world either engage an experienced on-line course designer or are versed themselves in ways to take advantage of the tools and features the on-line format allow. I think there is room for all types of learners and educators. To believe that one type of teaching or learning should fit all is myopic.