“Online learning now depends more on the ability of educators and trainers to tutor and support learners online than on the technology itself.”
- Dr. Ian Heywood, 2000 World Open Learning Conference and Exhibition, Birmingham, England.

One of the most effective means to train global learners is through Internet-based distributed education, but perhaps in ways different than usually thought.

Nearly everyone views the Internet as a fundamental communication and research tool. However, we also believe it is a unique learning and collaboration tool in education. It is a vehicle to reach out to the world – to stretch beyond geography to find new population of learners.

But if the Internet can be used to reach out to the world, the corollary is that it can also be used to bring the world to a virtual classroom. The challenge then has been to effectively utilize this medium to capture the wealth of global information resources and a whole new cadre of international faculty in ways unimagined in the traditional classroom environment.