During class at Internet-based Cardean University, a small window pops open on the computer screen, and a video displays Nobel Prize winner and University of Chicago economist Merton Miller sharing an anecdote on a finance principle. Finally, the student is provided with a problem involving a fictional company to solve using the principle. Just another day in the virtual classroom. Students also form a community through online bulletin boards, where they post ideas and discuss problems and, occasionally, the instructor prods the community with a question or an observation. Students can avoid instruction on things they know and instead concentrate on those that they don't.
Homework is submitted via e-mail.
Instructors, who never look the students in the eye, know whether the students are getting it. The secret of online learning is in the pedagogy, the fancy word for the science of education. There are still textbooks. But no more lectures, and no more teachers' dirty looks. If you can give a lecture, you can write a book.