When you hear that universities are investing huge, but unknown, sums of money in distance education in order to help mobility impair students or to take on the threat of virtual trade schools or universities, be aware that these are not the big or real issues. Technology is not the problem. Distance education threatens two professorial demands-educational quality and the protection of our intellectual property. Faculty find that teaching is fascinating, vexing to measure, but thrilling when you do it well and it works. Students may think the goal of the instructor is to stimulate and entertain them.
Faculty think their teaching mission is to inform and enlighten.
Why do people by the tens of thousands attend sporting contests despite the high and rising cost of tickets when watching the television would provide more comfort, telescopic vision, and replay. The experience of being part of it, being there is stimulating. We educate by engaging the students in a dueling dance of the minds, whereas monitors sit there receiving only the surface of the mental action. Education is more than lectures. We have a forum for a community of learners to test their understandings and their creative ideas.