This is actually starting to happen on my campus. Right now we have one set method of providing online courses through a learning management system (moodle) and a pilot of streaming the video and slides or providing downloadable audio podcasts of lectures. We are piloting another system this coming fall that should be more scalable.

The problem is a bit two-fold. My department has been tasked with managing and supporting all of these applications. We have a skeleton staff as it is, and with the budget cuts it's getting harder to justify the money to hire student assistants (even through financial aid). Right now I've been placed in charge of mapping out our help desk for these applications with three students and myself doing the support work for 1,700 faculty and way too many students (about 30,000? I don't remember the number). College departments are coming to us to put materials online because they cannot afford paper. They have no interest in actually progressing and moving into the 21st century, but are forced to digitize materials due to lack of funds. If it were up to some of these departments, we'd still be using chalk on slates.

The other part of the problem is actually maintaining the systems. We have three system administrators who have to balance time with supporting the servers running the applications and our internal office networks. These people, unfortunately, also get "borrowed" by whatever department on campus needs to supplement their IT staff (or lack thereof) when doing academically related projects. All of this with a shrinking budget and absurdly high expectations from the University.

All this talk and movement of materials online is great. It provides more access to students exactly in your situation that would prefer learning at his or her own pace and time. Our campus is a major commuter school and apparently 80% of our students work on top of full loads of classes, with something like 60% of those working full time. Being able to do course materials (for the most part) without coming on to campus is a big plus. However, people also need to realize that doing this also shifts the pain of funding books monetarily onto departments that are already stretched to capacity.