Vlad Wielbut
"Better Than Being There": Where Online Learning Makes the Most Sense

The article focuses on a kind of online learning that goes beyond being a mere add-on to "traditional" classroom education, offering a unique value that would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain in a non-online setting. This value is often called "better than being there", a term that implies, somewhat counterintuitively, an advantage of virtual over physical presence. What could possibly be better than having students gather in one physical location in order to learn, interact, and socialize? By analyzing two examples from the University of Michigan the author will try to answer that question.

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