by Kathryn Winograd

LET'S BEGIN THIS WAY: imagine you have been asked to teach in a new kind of classroom. You are led to an open doorway where beyond there is only darkness. Before entering, you are given a pair of earplugs so that you can no longer hear anything around you. You are led to a small desk where a single light shines down on the surface of it. You are told that, periodically, your students are present, but you can neither see nor hear them. Occasionally, a piece of paper appears on your desk beneath the light. It is a message from one of your students written a few minutes ago or an hour ago or days ago. To respond, you write your own message on a piece of paper, place it under the light, and watch it disappear to where, you do not know. Besides these messages, you have been given only one other tool to teach with: a large screen upon which you may place anything.

Seems like a daunting prospect, doesn't it? And yet this is the essence of on-line learning, or eLearning, where computers, modems and the Internet have replaced the envelopes and the televisions of distance learning courses of old. Teaching with Internet technology continues to evolve at such a dizzying pace that it has earned its own spotlight in the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Discussions about the technicalities of the technology have blossomed beyond heated debates about the ability or inability of learning communities to be formed in the purely on-line course to cautionary forecasts that if this technology is not used in the traditional classroom then these students will be deprived of educational opportunities.

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