From The Idea of the Digital University by Frank Bryce McCluskey and Melanie Lynn Winter pg 6-7:
What makes the online course so different? When the semester is finished, there is a record of every interaction, every question and every event that occurred in the digital course. There was no such record with the traditional classroom. For hundreds of years, a single professor would close the door; class would begin; and there was no oversight, record or map of what had happened. We did not have the tools to determine if a class was well taught. Many teachers never entered the classrooms where their colleagues taught. Professors taught in isolation. Comparisons between each other did not occur or if they did, it was a subjective interpretation. While there were occasional efforts at team-teaching and collaboration, teaching was an individual matter that was not recorded.
Mark Carrigan 