Online Learning in US News and World Report

A recent US News and World Report issue focused on online learning.
New Answers for E-Learning:
Wikis and avatars are improving the educational experience ""My pet peeve is professors who just paste PowerPoint slides, a textbook assignment, and a quiz into a course shell in Blackboard" and think they've created a good online course, says Darcy Hardy, who heads the University of Texas's TeleCampus." http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/e-learning/2008/01/10/new-answers-for-e-learning.html?PageNr=1
It lists several colleges involved with online degrees, as well as transfer considerations.
There is also a brief article on Second Life in the same issue, A Second Life for Higher Ed: A virtual world offers new opportunities for teaching, http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/e-learning/2008/01/10/a-second-life-for-higher-ed.html
It is interesting that Peter Ludlow, a professor at the University of Toronto, seems to be not aware of ways to sense emotion in Second Life, including Sloodles classroom HUD, the use of voice, and more interactive teaching approaches, which might lessen the need to look at the avatar's eyes or whatever. It is also interesting that if this same teacher is in a class of 30 or more students at one time, sensing all the students emotions would be impossible to do. Online learning and good learning should focus on active particiopation, not just receiving the lecture and asking an occasional question. I use a combination of a physical classroom and online methods, which work well together.