DISQUS

Clearly there is an engaged population of students that continue to pour into these online learning venues as Online Nation's numbers indicate. Should the online enrollments continue to double roughly every four years, universities will have a tsunami of off-site learners to accommodate. Online students are now becoming part of the offline lecture "class". Would it not be cool if embedded technologies that companies like ziizoo.com use right now to link students and tutors online, like video chat and whiteboards, to integrate the classroom experience more completely for those online? Thus the classroom becomes seamless and immediate, rather than bifurcated by location and requiring two distinct preparation phases and the extra time to deliver to students. Virtual hours could be held so students on campus can help students off campus and vice versa. Then, everyone starts learning from each other as technology allows the online student to participate more completely.