On-line learning vs. in-class learning – three falls out of five?

A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times got me thinking about strengths and weaknesses offered by on-line learning. The writer, Mark Edmundson from the University of Virginia who teaches Shakespeare there, lauds the wonder of the intimate, free-flowing, improvisational-yet-responsive nature of in-class experiences, and contrasts this with what he posits is the cookie-cooker, video-based, hardly-better-than-a-textbook online course that he asserts represents the genre.

 Hmmm. . .