Online Learning: Implications for Higher Education Pedagogy and Policy‪.‬

Introduction In 1997, in an article entitled, "The Internet and Education: A Close Fit," Neil Rudenstine (1997), president of Harvard University, while asserting that direct human contact was absolutely essential to serious education, observed that the Internet and other electronic networks allow communication to take place at all hours and across any distance as well as permit a significant extension of the scope, continuity, and quality of certain forms of instructional interaction. Furthermore, he observed that these technologies were having an enormous influence on traditional education while redefining our concept of distance learning.