Not simply a matter of putting the syllabus online

I think I taught my first online class about nine years ago. My wife beat me to online teaching by three years, I think. And, she taught calculus, which meant spending hours composing the equations using MS-Word's equation editor. Oh those godawful days with modem connections and slow computers!

Even that many years ago, we clearly understood that online teaching was not simply providing the syllabus and notes online, and then everything being on "autopilot." The reality was quite the contrary and we spent a great deal of time interacting with students and evaluating their work. It took a while for learning management systems to rise up to that reality (I personally don't care for those systems.) The CEO of Blackboard, Michael L. Chasen, says:

When the industry started, it was about how to put a course online. Now it's about how to put the whole educational process online. It's about teaching and learning that take place in the classroom environment as well as outside — people putting their communities online, people putting their student services online. That's just a different problem than people were trying to address back when we started the company in 1997.

Which then opens up immense possibilities for something like Second Life--to become an online learning environment. No wonder then that my wife is exicted about a NSF-funded grant at their college that will underwrite developing and offering courses in Second Life!