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Hi Jennifer, Nice article – it should be required reading for online instructors. I agree with the study’s findings, especially concerning the role of the instructor. Including this semester, I have taken eleven courses via Oncourse at Indiana University and I have found that instructor participation is the number one determinant of course quality. If an instructor participates in the discussion forums and works hard to make the course the best that it can be then the students respond. I have taken courses where the instructor expected a lot out of us, but he/she gave as good as he/she got – they set a high standard for both the students and themselves, and I think the students responded and learned a lot. On the other hand, I have had instructors who were nothing more than glorified paper graders. These instructors would seed a discussion topic and then disappear – any further posting from them would be like a Bigfoot sighting; not only that, they would also take a long time to mark our assignments, which caused me to wonder, “Just what are they doing with all their time? They’re not posting on the board so I know they’ve got the time to at least grade our papers in a timely fashion.” My worst instructors were doctoral candidates (maybe they were busy working on their doctorate and just coasting with my class?), but my best instructor was a doctoral candidate, too; my instructors who already had their doctorates were all good. I think distance education has limited applications because certain subjects don’t lend themselves well to a distance format. I think that subjects like languages and mathematics require a physical classroom. I majored in Philosophy in undergrad and don’t think that I would have learned nearly as much if I had taken it via distance. Fortunately for us, the study of education is a subject that lends itself well to the distance-learning format. I sometimes have lingering doubts about distance education, in that I wonder if it’s as rigorous as a F2F class. So far, I’ve made A’s in every distance class I’ve taken (I hope I didn’t just jinx myself!). I work hard, I read the material, I make a lot of posts, I write good papers – but would it be “A” material in a F2F class? I have worries about the legitimacy, too; for instance, distance degrees are not recognized in Taiwan, so I couldn’t get a university instructor position there with my IU degree. Sometimes it’s like a dirty secret – I tell people that I’m doing a distance degree but qualify it by saying, “It’s Indiana University – it’s a good school, really!” At the end of the day, I think I’ve made the right choice. When I complete my degree in the summer I will have an M.S. TESOL + 5 years experience teaching EFL and I will almost certainly be able to get a sweet university instructor job in Japan or Korea; without the degree, attaining a job like that would be a long shot. What is your opinion of the article? Do you think it reflects your experiences with distance learning? Ken