A Classroom Of One

This is Gene Maeroff's "report from the front" on the short history and status of online learning in the United States and around the world. Maeroff is a reporter who takes you to the schools from Penn State's World Campus to the Florida Virtual School to the newly emerging online learning initiatives in Afghanistan. His journey ultimately provides a snapshot of the way in which technology is changing the minds of people with regard to the nature of higher education. He looks at the method of electronic delivery, the quality of the information being delivered and quality of interaction it engenders. He looks at the way learners are adapting to this new technology and how much responsibility is put on the student's shoulders. Finally, and maybe tellingly, he looks at the business of online learning.

A well-known journalist takes a hard look at distance education

Publishers Weekly

Most of the recent flood of books about online learning can be divided into pro (Internet-based education will replace overpriced, rigid, traditional institutions and provide a profoundly better product) and con (online learning is a fringe educational activity pushed by untrustworthy for-profit dot-coms). Maeroff, the author of 11 books over the past 27 years commenting on education, has steered a prudent middle course. He sees online education as an important and growing part of traditional instruction, a tool that will help solve many existing problems. His clear account of those problems helps explain the appeal of the Internet. But he also sees a central role for traditional face-to-face instruction in physical classrooms for the foreseeable future. The line between classroom and Internet instruction will blur as traditional courses add online content and online courses take more responsibility, he says. Internet use will be heaviest for students who are not well served by bricks-and-mortar instruction. The author covers Internet use from elementary school through college and post-college education, home schooling, legal issues, accreditation, professional certification and international courses-all the while describing the subject's history, current state and potential future. His broad knowledge and irreverent style make the dense material more than readable, but this is still a weighty professional book with comprehensive coverage backed by hundreds of interviews and citations. Regrettably, the book fails to discuss the technology itself or the economics behind it. Still, it's the best general work on the subject for educators and administrators. (Feb.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Gene I. Maeroff is Director of the Heichinger Institute on Education and Media at Teachers College/Columbia University and the author of Altered Destinies.