[anigbrowl]

many people...would be left out...because they allowed everyone in

Logical paradoxes aside, surely the benefit of online teaching is that you can do basic filtering as easily as you can disseminate the coursework. Of course, that means employing crude metrics like multiple-choice tests, but such metrics play a large part in the existing admissions process.

[woodall]

I had to take an online course last year. I found it interesting because the instructor had questions on the exams where we had to write essays on a certain topics. The online course I took before that, 3 years earlier, only consisted of multiple choice and True/False.

I talked to the professor after the course just to make sure I understood the content, and one of his remarks was that student's essays where too short. The problem, I think, was that text boxes were ~10 rows, so the students would fill in those 10 rows and think they were done.

Online learning is still new, but I think there are tons of improvements that can be made in order to make it a bit easier for everyone to understand.