Ever Done Distance Learning? eschool, correspondance, etc..

I've taken a few distance learning classes and they were alright. The way they were set up was that we watched the instructor/prof via live television a few times a week, had reading assignments, and did quizzes and small assignments online. It's really a great option for those who can't commute to the actual classroom, or just need to pick up a few gen ed courses. However, while it's a great option for gen ed classes, I prefer traditional classrooms for more difficult subjects. To do well in distance classes, it requires a lot of personal discipline. The teacher is not going to know if you are skipping lectures, not doing the reading, etc. It's really up to you to keep up with a schedule that you make yourself. It's also much easier to communicate face-to-face that it is over a television.

I remeber doing distance learning in highschool as i had to pick up and extra course for college in my alst year. Personally, i was extremly motivated to do well in teh course which i guess is a really big problem for most distnace education classes. The course i was taking was Biology 12 (basically senior level biology) and i found i really thrived underpressure; as i was also taking geography, literature, physics and calculus concurrently; so what little spare time i had was spent on the course. Had i not been motivated to finish the course i dont think i would have done very well at it. I hope online courses are not the way of the future as many other students i knew that were taking similar courses found ways to cheat or manipulate the system in their favour. Either way this just doesnt beat the classical way of learning from a teacher;my teacher was of no help and i dont think i ever asked him for help as all he did was send me and email explaing my question which would have been the same as reading the text.