That's going to be the key to the future of online learning: not whether universities simply film their best lecturers, or place all their course materials online, but whether they find an optimal design for online learning. But of course, as I suggested in my earlier post, it may not be universities who first figure this out: it may be educational entrepreneurs like Sebastian Thrun. If so -- and depending on what kinds of intellectual property claims people like Thrun can make and sustain -- universities may find themselves playing a futile game of catch-up.
