What does it do the the argument that traditional hybrid schools started granting credentials to online students who don't do any of the above about a decade ago? I graduated from a regional college in a program like that almost a decade ago. You can't even tell from transcript, much less the diploma, that I took systems analysis online vs in person.

Also I suppose it depends on the level of your fellow students, but before I switched to mostly online, I took plenty of classroom classes, and I found that most lively discussions and debate were either students who didn't bother doing the reading and didn't mind displaying their ignorance very inconveniently and publicly, didn't have the horsepower to figure it out, or were trying to get into heaven by stubbornly insisting on some religious interpretation.

If merely making kids talk to each other resulted in brilliance, then discussions at bars, parties, and on facebook would be worthwhile... but they just aren't, not even close. I mean, realistically, what fraction of 19 year olds have anything to say worth hearing, especially about esoteric advanced topics, and then whats the odds of having one of those people in your class (pretty low, indeed). Frankly even after completing the class and doing pretty well, more than a decade later I still don't have anything intelligible to say about diffeqs or bode stability plots.