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"The problem with most online courses is that the vast majority of people who sign up for them never finish — they aren't engaged " - Exactly.

As an educator who pioneered online courses: http://www.cadvision.com/blanc..., I see the same issues being repeated over and over again. It is very difficult to deliver online courses effectively. In my 20 years of experience, I have seen only one effective online delivery and that is from The SIP School who provides certification for the Session Information Protocol for VoIP.

People learn using a combination of learning styles: visual, auditory, doing and thinking. Usually one style is predominant over the others. Plus there's the participation factor: if you attended a university lecture where the instructor presented the material and you sat back and just took notes, after 3 days, you would remember about 10%. If you did a laboratory exercise, after 3 days you would remember 80%. Doing things works the best.

The SIP School example uses an animated visual presentation with a voice over. The script is available for reading and reviewing also. Periodic quizzes are provided to re-enforce the material and provide a "doing" portion. I consider The SIP School the bar for online learning over anything the institute that I work at.

You can take a demo of their material to see what excellent online training looks like: http://www.thesipschool.com/co...

The other issue is that online courses focus on those individuals who primarily learn by reading (visually oriented). This makes it difficult for those who learn in one of the other methods.

I pioneered online learning back in 1994 with the Internet. After a year of struggling with online learning with post secondary learners and the problems that they faced, I came quickly to the conclusion that nothing beats face to face learning. I wrote up a multipage report on the problems and presented it to the Dean of our department. The report was ignored, shelved and never read. The attitude was that I must of been doing something wrong and that they could do it better.

Almost 20 years later, the same problems are occuring for online learning, it focuses on one predominat learning style: seeing. There are 4 basic learning styles: seeing, hearing, doing and thinking. The "seeing" learning style is characterized by a person who can pickup a book or read a webpage and gather knowledge in that manner. A "hearing" oriented learning, learns by listening. They are characterized by being able to follow verbal instructions or directions easily: "go two blocks North, turn left, go 4 blocks then turn right next to the blue garbage bin, etc..".
The "doing" learning style, learns by doing the work, this is the best way to learn. Our institute is heavily loaded with lab work, up to 50% of classroom time is spent in the lab. Another way to re-inforce doing is by taking notes, either through pen and paper or laptop. The last learning style is "thinking". A person who is predominantly a thinker will have to "think" about what was said or presented to him in order to understand. They "go away" for a little while to assimilate the information then return back to the conversation. A typical reaction from a thinker is that they will briefly look away when you tell them something new.
Nobody has just one learning style, we have combinations of all 4 and are predominate with one or two.

If I gave a University theatre style lecture, no interaction with the students, straight power point presentations with powerpoint handouts already given out, the students will remember about 10-15% after 3 days. If it was a smaller class size of 30 students or less, interactive questions between the students and instructors, note taking, then after 3 days, the students will remember about 30%. If it was a lab with hands on exercises and interaction, the students will remember about 80% after 3 days.

Online learning fails by not delivering multiple learning styles and by missing the teacher/student interaction. It falls somewhere in the University large theatre learning results - that's why the high failure rate. Often, it takes a person to explain how things work. I found that the majority of students were particularly hesistant to use online tools (email, forums, blogs, twitter, 1-800 numbers) to contact the instructor to ask questions when things didn't make sense. They preferred to struggle "days" trying to figure it out until they could meet face to face.

The best learning is obviously "to do", my preference is to have no theory classes, just lab classes and pass on the information on a need to know basis. It's time to do this lab, this is what you need to know to do this. In the past, I've found that no matter how many times, you talk about a particular topic: in the classroom, online, at the beginning of a lab, it will be forgotten until the time is right and the student is ready for the information. In one course, I used to repeat the same explanation to each student in the lab when they needed to know it. I would repeat the exact same 5 minute explanation over 100 times a week. The students appreciated the one on one time and I got really good at explaining it! LOL.

The problem with having "just lab" classes, is that it flies in the face of everything that Universities teach about learning. The mantra is present the material, give an example, students practice the material and then assess the students. That is the "best practice" (I hate that phrase!) teaching method. In my labs, I don't feel that it is right to be

I pioneered online learning back in 1994 with the Internet. After a year of struggling with online learning with post secondary learners and the problems that they faced, I came quickly to the conclusion that nothing beats face to face learning. I wrote up a multipage report on the problems and presented it to the Dean of our department. The report was ignored, shelved and never read. The attitude was that I must of been doing something wrong and that they could do it better.

Almost 20 years later, the same problems are occuring for online learning, it focuses on one predominat learning style: seeing. There are 4 basic learning styles: seeing, hearing, doing and thinking. The "seeing" learning style is characterized by a person who can pickup a book or read a webpage and gather knowledge in that manner. A "hearing" oriented learning, learns by listening. They are characterized by being able to follow verbal instructions or directions easily: "go two blocks North, turn left, go 4 blocks then turn right next to the blue garbage bin, etc..".
The "doing" learning style, learns by doing the work, this is the best way to learn. Our institute is heavily loaded with lab work, up to 50% of classroom time is spent in the lab. Another way to re-inforce doing is by taking notes, either through pen and paper or laptop. The last learning style is "thinking". A person who is predominantly a thinker will have to "think" about what was said or presented to him in order to understand. They "go away" for a little while to assimilate the information then return back to the conversation. A typical reaction from a thinker is that they will briefly look away when you tell them something new.
Nobody has just one learning style, we have combinations of all 4 and are predominate with one or two.

If I gave a University theatre style lecture, no interaction with the students, straight power point presentations with powerpoint handouts already given out, the students will remember about 10-15% after 3 days. If it was a smaller class size of 30 students or less, interactive questions between the students and instructors, note taking, then after 3 days, the students will remember about 30%. If it was a lab with hands on exercises and interaction, the students will remember about 80% after 3 days.

Online learning fails by not delivering multiple learning styles and by missing the teacher/student interaction. It falls somewhere in the University large theatre learning results - that's why the high failure rate. Often, it takes a person to explain how things work. I found that the majority of students were particularly hesistant to use online tools (email, forums, blogs, twitter, 1-800 numbers) to contact the instructor to ask questions when things didn't make sense. They preferred to struggle "days" trying to figure it out until they could meet face to face.

The best learning is obviously "to do", my preference is to have no theory classes, just lab classes and pass on the information on a need to know basis. It's time to do this lab, this is what you need to know to do this. In the past, I've found that no matter how many times, you talk about a particular topic: in the classroom, online, at the beginning of a lab, it will be forgotten until the time is right and the student is ready for the information. In one course, I used to repeat the same explanation to each student in the lab when they needed to know it. I would repeat the exact same 5 minute explanation over 100 times a week. The students appreciated the one on one time and I got really good at explaining it! LOL.

The problem with having "just lab" classes, is that it flies in the face of everything that Universities teach about learning. The mantra is present the material, give an example, students practice the material and then assess the students. That is the "best practice" (I hate that phrase!) teaching method. In my labs, I don't feel that it is right to be assessed on the first

Most people, like yourself, slap together a resume and send it out. They typically under value themselves. A buddy of mine in his 50s, was recently let go and he came by to get my opinion on his resume. The first thing that I read was that he knew MS Office for software and the first line on his hardware experience was PCs and laptops. The first impression was that he was looking for a junior position. In realilty, he was an expert in Unix, SANs, NAS, security, system forsenics, etc.. After sitting down and reviewing his experience and putting it in the order that he wanted prospective employers to see, he ended up with an excellent resume that reflected his skills and years of experience. The next week, he had 4 interviews, 3 head-hunters wanting him and 2 clients. I recommend that you run your resume by someone who knows you, your work experience and knowledge. I've put a simple 2 page web site together for us nerds that details the job process. I'm a teacher in a post secondary institute specializing in VoIP so it's not some free plug for a business or anything.

The most successful courses that I've teach have a very high ratio of lab time (2/3) to theory time (1/3). One of the most enjoyable courses was a basic electricity course that I struggled with designing because of the time limit imposed - it was impossible to divide it into a traditional theory/lab split without losing significant content. The solution was to make it a 100% lab course and teach the theory on a need to know basis - Just In Time delivery of content!

Based on my experience, it always makes me wonder why we have theory classes at all. Most theory content can be easily researched by the student when directed so. I know that the real reason is an economical one and not an educational one. It is inexpensive to fill up a large lecture hall and pay for just one instructor to mindlessly lecture for a hour or more. It is expensive to pay many instructors or instructional assistants required to tutor small lab classes for hands-on learning.

How about a better comparison: Pollution(CO2 tonnes) vs area of land (km2)? This is a better comparison based on the CO2 tonnes divided by the area of the country/region with a resultant tonnes of CO2 per km2 value:

Sources:

Wikipedia for areas of country/region
IEA CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2011

(and yes I am Canadian)

There's quite a discrepancy over the speeds on flash drives. Cheap flash drives run USB 1.1 and the transfer rates are around 1 MB/sec. USB 2.0 drives range from slow 10 MB/sec to close to 40 MB/sec. The fastest drives will cost easily over $100. The size of the drive will slow the transfer rate also. 4 GB drives are faster than 8 GB and so on. Corsair GT drives have close to 35 MB/sec read speeds, write speeds are always dramatically slower. I've installed a bootable PBX in a Flash on a 4 GB Corsair USB flash drive with very acceptable performance for teaching purposes. I can see other LAMP bootable installations popping up. Each student can have their own server to configure and boot-up then take shut it down and take it home.

• First mistake is that giving someone a PC does not make them computer literate.
  
• The vast majority of students (ages 17-50+) that I teach don't have a clue how to use a PC.
• Valuable class room time is lost in the technology enhanced labs while 1/4 of the students are trying to setup and connect their laptops to the network. I don't have the time or mandate in my non-PC/networking courses to help these students.
  
• Take a walk through a class that has the student's using laptops. Don't be surprised if you find 1/4 to 1/2 of the students browsing the Internet, checking email or just basically wasting their time
  
• Everyone is jumping on the eLearning bandwagon saying its the best thing to happen since sliced bread but in reality it is just correspondence courses with a new look. Correspondence courses sucked, why doesn't eLearning suck - it saves the schools money and looks hi-tech that's why.
  
• Computer based learning only addresses one of the four learning styles: visual. What about the other 3/4 of the student population who are audible, thinking and doers or combinations of these?
  
• The idea of technology enhanced classrooms for the delivery of material is a joke. Not only does the instructor has to be an expert in his field but he has to learn how to manage and manipulate the smart whiteboard, elmo projector, overhead projection system and laptop while keeping some semblance of continuity of material. This may seem trivial to some reading this but if you ever had to give presentations for 6 hours per day on 3 different topics in front of large crowds, you most likely understand the problems in delivery.
  
• Who's going to pay to have my last 7 years of traditional teaching methods transferred to this new media. It's worked perfectly fine using an overhead projector and a whiteboard. The course objectives were thoroughly covered and the students were happy. I sure won't work for free and convert everything over just for the latest fad.
  

Yes, this message was written over broadband. I didn't ever say the Aussie broadband situation wasn't bad. I have great respect for the country's history as well, so don't take it personally mmmkay? Now, let me put it to you this way. Telstra is an Australian-based company, if I'm not mistaken, and a very successful one at that. It is traded on the Australian stock exchange. That means that some people in your country, though perhaps not yourself or the original slashdot poster, actually support this company. This is called dollar voting. A company can't succeed unless people actually buy its products. While you support a company, no matter if you like it, your complaints are meaningless. Action speaks louder than words.

Now let me tell you how it is here. In this Canadian city, we have one real telephone company, Telus. We also have one cable company, Shaw. This is by no means a tiny city either, though not huge. Shaw provides cable-based broadband service. When they first provided it about 5 years ago, their service was horrible. We had outages for weeks sometimes, DNS problems, poor tech support (they specifically told many non-Windows users that in spite of the problem being their fault they wouldn't correct it because the people weren't using Windows). It was pure bullshit. They have improved some in that time but man did they ever suck and they were about the only option until cheap home DSL arrived. Initially it was only 3 real companies who provided it. CADvision, Nucleus, and Telus. Telus still to this day has bandwidth limits and poor tech support. Being the only telephone company around they have an attitude of not caring about the concerns of customers because they assume those customers have no choice, which is mostly true. CADvision was a decent provider, heck before I had cable all I did was connect via 14.4 modem through them. Then it was eaten by PSInet and went downhill. Now, it's been eaten by Telus. Yep, phone company now owns two of the largest ISPs in the city. Nucleus is still around and isn't half bad.

But you know all that took 5 years to really happen here and I don't ask you to pity me because that'd be the pussy thing to do. If I want change, I'll bloody well get out there and make it happen but you know what? I don't give a shit. I made my point in the parent post and there are much more pressing things in the world to worry about than whether or not you can apt-get update your debian packages or play Quake 3 Arena with decent latency.

- ACPlus

In the more well-connected communities there are some local providers that have gotten into the DSL market. In Calgary, this includes Nucleus Information Services and Cadvision and probably a few others. The phone company (yes, the ONE phone company) here which also provides DSL is Telus Communications. I know that in many communities such competition does not exist, however.

Here as well, for a limited time only and with rather limited bandwidth, but at least it's not /.ed yet.

http://www.shaw.ca

Maybe the lower price is because @home has real competition here. You can get DSL service starting at $445 a year ($38/month CDN, ie. $26/month US)

http://www.cadvision.com
http://www.telus.com