Viewpoint

Distance learning is a hot topic on U.S. college campuses. Recently, a trend has developed in many schools to offer complete email courses, and in some cases, one can obtain an entire degree via email [3, 4]. But there are nagging questions: In such a course, do students get a proper education? Do degrees offered through email increase the quality of the programs or merely increase the class enrollment? The typical course structure taught through email is as follows: Students and teachers rarely if ever see each other. Students download the syllabus from the Web or the syllabus is emailed to each student. Email-course students buy the same books as would students enrolled in the same course taught in a traditional classroom. Every week, the instructor assigns reading material and exercises from books; students complete the assignments and email the results to the teacher. The teacher evaluates the work and returns the graded assignments via email. Exams are also emailbased. In my view, teaching an entire course or offering an entire degree via email is not appropriate. In doing so, the quality of education is compromised for the following reasons: