IT-Mediated Distance Learning
The Sloan Foundation has invested over $30 million in the development of Asynchronous Learning Networks. Their conclusions from over 100,000 sponsored course units in thousands of courses:
I) This stuff works. You can reproduce the classroom over the Internet with no apparent loss of educational quality (as measured by test scores, etc.).
2) It is not expensive to convert a course into ALN format (about $10,000 per course), if the aim is interactive rather than automated teaching.
The key: Donít automate the classroom, but break it free from the constraints of space and time!