This morning Jennifer M. Granholm, the governor of Michigan, signed a bill that will require all high-school students in the state to take at least one course online before they can graduate. This is apparently the first such requirement in the nation.
The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Michigan Requires Online Attendance
The thinking behind this is that students are likely to see online education and traing in college and the workforce so this prepare them for that eventuality. This is a reasonable assumption as the use of online educational resources spreads. What I wonder about is law schools. In the nearly 4 years since the ABA added standards for distance education (approved August 2002) very few schools have added DE courses to their cirriculum. Why doesn’t every ABA accredited law have at least one course offered using DE? I can think of any reason beyond some sort of academic inertia. Certainly every law school, especially every CALI member school, has the tools available to put one 2 or 3 credit, upper level course online and offer it to their own students. Of course it may be that all this is happening in a space I don’t see.