I would say that I was knowledgable on the internet taking over the roles of teachers. If only because I have now taken 2 IDL courses and should be starting a third awfuly soon. The overwhelming differences between a course taught through a computer and a course taught in a classromm (even one taught on computers in a classroom) are evident. Self-motivation is involved much more in a class that is soley on computers. It is required that you not just stick to a regular schedual of attending class and doing things when the professer tells you they ought to be done, but that you plan a schedual for yourself. The other irritating factor in taking online classes is that even in a chatroom, questions are slow to be answered. It is very easy to ignore the contribution or question of one person when that person is only a line of text. Writting a question in an email, a blog, or a chatroom does not have the same effect as asking one in the eerie silence of a lecture hall. I would say another glaring difference is the variation in enthusiasm. In person to person teaching there is a wide variety of enthusiasm for students and the class in general. In my experience with online courses, there is not much variation - everyone is apathetic. This could be that professors teaching online classes have many pressing, not-online, concerns. Maybe the problem lies in the value we place on online or computer based classes rather than on the lack of enthusiam from the professors. In either case, I find a certain apathy from online instructors. They leave for weeks at a time and fail to mention it to their students, they reply to emails only if sent 10-14 times to 5 different email addresses. Demanding a persons time is much easier in a face-to-face situation because politeness dictates that a professor not totally ignore someone talking to them and refuse to reply. I still place much value in the traditional classroom taught classes and little in the computer-based classes. Nonetheless, I am taking one more online class in about a month.