Online learning is a problem? Really? News to me!!!

The president of the university where I am employed notes in his end-of-the-year email:

many of our students spend a good part of their lives in a “cyber world” subculture. They find their news, music and other forms of connections with others in this cyberspace rather than three dimensional space. For some students, online reference sources similar to Wikipedia are thought to be an authoritative reference for factual information about science, history, art and culture. Books, newspapers and other reference materials are then less read, if read at all.  Because cyberspace information sources often blur the distinction between truth and opinion, we as educators are often unaware of how differently students see the world of fact and opinion and truth and falsity. It is fair to say that since many of us as teachers are not a part of the student cyber culture, we are often unable to counter the misinformation and lack of critical introspection so prevalent in cyberspace.  Since clearly seeing the problem is necessary to finding a reasonable solution, many here on the faculty and staff are engaged in becoming more involved in the cyber world in order to be better teachers. Cyberspace information allows students to access incredible amounts of information without a credible means of ascertaining its veracity. In effect, students may become “private learners” in cyberspace without the kind of corrective public discourse so necessary to a university education. This is one of the downsides of teaching in the “information age”. We will continue to work on the problem.

(emphasis is mine.)

But ...

• This is by no means any downside at all.  The phenomenal growth in this information age has liberated teaching and learning from the narrow and confining walls of the classrooms. Even from libraries, dusty or new.  No more is the supposed "sage" at the center of the stage.
• Students as "private learners" is not the problem.  It is a problem that academe has not figured out how to empower that mode.  However, that day of reckoning is not that much far away, as experiments like OCW, UnCollege, Peer-to-peer U., etc, force the status-quo maintaining old guards to change ...
• Am reminded of Bill Gates' comment: 

  'Place-based colleges' are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet

• Why is this cyber-based learning considered a problem?  This is no problem.  The problem is the same one as in the previous ages as well: are the students learning, and benefiting from the classes?  The fact that we don't talk about this, or very minimally in terms of filling out appropriate forms and preparing bureaucratic reports, is the real problem we need to tackle.
• The fact that many faculty are clueless about the rapidly exploding cyber-media, and refuse to go anywhere near it is even more a problem.  Of course, having tenure means that they can continue to engage in their classroom activities the same way they did even Before Internet! 
• And, don't even get me started on the truth-versus-opinion issue.  I know quite a few faculty colleagues who take nothing but opinions to their classrooms.  Truth(s) be damned, I suppose!

And, thus begins another summer :)