The enthusiasm of the new convert

I was at the University of West England yesterday for a validation event. They are creating an online software engineering course. I was struck by the enthusiasm they had for e-learning in general. I forget that it can strike people this way. Back in 1999 I came across like some e-learning Billy Graham, but now I tend to think everyone knows it, or am wary of over-hyping it. But it was nice to be reminded of this. They were excited about how e-learning allowed them to do things they had always wanted to do, but the lecture format didn't allow, for example getting students to do an activity immediately after giving them the knowledge or an example, or staggering lots of smaller assessments throughout a course.