I feel that online learning can be either great or useless, depending on the student. Just like in the classroom the motivation and effort of each student varies.
Students who excel in the classroom because of their motivation could use online courses to learn more than possible in a regular school. Students such as these have an internal motivation to learn and do not require constant supervision. Without other students in their class who hold back the pace of the course work and occupy an unfair amount of teacher time, these highly motivated students will be able to learn more than they ever could in the classroom.
The opposite is true of using online classes with unmotivated students. Unmotivated students will achieve even less than they would in a regular classroom. without constant supervision and reminders to stay on task, these students would complete little to no work in an online environment.
I do not think that just by making a class online it will become interesting for unmotivated students. The current method of simply adding computers to basic instructional methods will not engage at risk students.
Although your opening statement "online learning can be either great or useless" is an extremely bold statement, I have to say I almost agree with it. For some students it could create a great learning environment for success and for others a complete failure. And I think motivation is a main factor in determining if students have what it takes to succeed in an online learning environment. What I wonder is, is there a way that online learning can create motivation for all students? It will be interesting to see how online learning progresses.
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