With course sections offered by distance learning, attendance at these class meetings is optional, thus accomodating the needs of professionals to learn at varying times and at varying locations. This is an established technique used at another of other reputable univesities for undergrduate and graduate education. You are in touch with the professor and the other students via email and web postings. You provide and receive help via these media. For some courses, other media may be used as well.
Distance learning requires some degree of self-starting initiative.
You must be able to get started and study on your own. You must also be ready, willing, and able to interact with others to complete assignments and to offer and receive help. These skills are needed by most modern software engineers anyway, but if you don't want to do these things, then DL is probably not for you. You could, of course, attend our traditional class meetings, but the students at these meetings will be using the same learning techniques, too. You must have an internet connection that you can use for this course.