I'm currently taking courses via Umass for a BS in IT. I've taken a few courses here before, and had good results. The guy who taught my perl course actually looked at your code submissions, and commented on them. However, his timing was little bit off, and the final project for the class was far more complex than the knoweldge gained so far. (complete web based bb with a huge set of features).

It really is a mixed bag. The funny thing is, it seems the teachers that really put the effort into the online courses are NOT the same ones that teach daytime classes. Of the 6 courses I've taken, I'd rate 2 teachers great, 2 mediocre, and 2 seemed to hardly care. The top 3 were local professionals with fulltime day jobs, and the 3 worst were fulltime professors at the university (2 umass/amherst, 1 umass/lowell. - altho the lowell one seemed to feel bad about not getting enough time in)

I started and dropped out of school to work in the internet boom, and am just now returning via distance/online learning. When I was going days, you'd get about 2-3 50 minute lectures per week. Maybe 1 or 2 quests answered during class, and quite frankly, most of the professors 'posted hours' were joke. Hardly there, or just too many people waiting. Online, at least their lack of interest can be documented and shown to the people who cut their checks.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that its just like day classes. There are good ones and bad ones. I've taken to researching professors at various online websites, and just plain googling them to see if they've kept current or are just waiting for the return of fortran.