At the end of an online class, no one marks your name just because you showed up. You'll have to demonstrate that you've mastered the material. Frank Connolly, a professor of computer science and information at American University, in Washington, has taught both live and online classes and currently consults with other colleges to help plan effective online courses. He advises students to carefully choose the type of online class they want to take. Synchronous classes usually require students to attend online chats and turn in homework at specific times.
Asynchronous classes let students work at their own pace.
For a database administrator at a financial institution in San Francisco, choosing the wrong format for an online class made him lose interest. With the first online class I took, all the material was already laid out, and I just surfed through all the pages. If the topics are hard to grasp, the professor can slow down. But in an asynchronous online class, all that is static. Phillips points out, however, that asynchronous online classes have advantages.