The Eye, the magazine of the Columbia Spectator published a lengthy piece focusing on online learning. The article, The Virtual Classroom: What Can Online Education Do For Columbia? by Sammy Roth, is a useful summary and history of online learning at Columbia. Spurred by the growing media attention to online education and the response by numerous peer organizations, the article provides an in-depth look at the current situation at Columbia. The article features observations from Frank Moretti, executive director at CCNMTL, Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia’s chief digital officer, Robert Kasdin, Columbia's senior executive vice president, along with comments from faculty and librarians.

While the article focuses on massive open online courses (MOOCs), it does represent other approaches to online learning, including those featured at the schools of engineering and continuing education, where successful models have sustained distance learning programs for a number of years.

The author, Sammy Roth, has done an excellent job of getting quality observations from his sources and offers an accurate primer on online education issues at Columbia.