[choxi]

I agree that learning habits are important for effective education, but online programs can help students develop those habits better and more consistently than in-person programs can. For example, online programs are much more conducive to gamification. Gamification is essentially a method of shaping user habits into something productive -- it's awkward to do offline but feels natural in an online program.

Our program includes screencasts/videos and pair programming sessions over screenshare, and while it's not exactly the same as pairing in person it does a reasonable job of surfacing how an instructor/mentor thinks to provide queues for social modeling to students. Most people haven't met Richard Feynman, but if you watch enough of his YouTube videos you certainly get a sense for how he thinks and approaches problems.