The former tend to be small, specialized and personal institutions noted for a high degree of staff-student interactivity. Good examples to look at in Canada include Mount Allison and Queens University. These are institutions which focus not only on learning, but also, in the fostering of a learning community. They offer a nurturing and supportive environment in which student participation is actively encouraged. Their quality of instruction is excellent, not so much in the material presented (since, after all, calculus is the same everywhere), but rather, in the way it is tailored to individual student needs.

Few online agencies yet exhibit similar standards of service. Internet services have yet to move en masse from the dominant metaphors of catalogues or magazines to the emergent metaphor of the online community. Those online services which are successful - including Yahoo, Infoseek, and Firefly - offer a high degree of customization, comprehensive (and again, customizable) indexing, and many opportunities for interaction. These are again sites which provide a community for online users, but also which provide a wealth of partially digested and timely information.

Successful online educational institutions will probably combine these characteristics. They will likely be small, specialized, and personal. Even where institutions are large, success will depend on their ability to subdivide into small, community-sized units. Successful institutions will provide a supportive and nurturing community, and at the same time present educational materials and activities in a highly customized and student-centred manner.

Modularity

Modularity is the idea that an entity we consider to be a single unit is in fact composed of separate and independent parts. For example, computers are to a large degree modular. Various components can be plugged in, switched, swapped, or replaced with better parts.

In the same manner, online courses will be modular. A course - especially from the designer level - will no longer be seen as a single unit, but rather, as a collection of component parts, each of which may be replaced or upgraded as the need arises.

The predominant model for course design will resemble the architecture of contemporary computers. There will be a backbone, analogous to the computer's motherboard, which establishes the basic structure of the course. Into the backbone will be plugged in various learning modules, communication tools, and student information systems.

Customized courses will be the first major application of a modular approach to course design. In the first instance, customized courses will be designed to meet the needs of particular clients. For example, a college offering a selection of business and computer courses may assemble a customized package for a corporate training client.

Suppose a Business course consists of modules on Business Writing, Financial Accounting, and Customer Service. And support a computer course consists of modules on Word Processing, Email, and HTML Design. A new course could be constructed by selecting desired course modules, say, a Corporate Communications course consisting of modules on Business Writing, Customer Service, Word Processing and Email.