Cecilia,
Thanks for your inquiry.  Actually, there are a lot of benefits of online learning, aside for the obvious one of accessibility to those who are working full time.  Research has revealed many benefits of an online format, including the quality of responses and interaction via an asynchronous environment (ex: discussion boards or chats that are set up to be asynchronous).  The advantage of an asynchronous environment is that students who may be traditionally more reserved or hesitant to respond in a face to face environment, have time to organize their thoughts and provide an answer or reponse that is not only more insightful but of higher quality.  In addition, in a traditional environment you often encounter one or two people that have a tendency to dominate a conversation, whereas this does not occur as frequently in an online environment.
However, I will add that the quality of the course and the learning experience is contingent upon the development of the course itself, the commitment the instructor makes to providing feedback (an essential element in online learning environments), and the amount of collaborative learning that is implemented into the development of the course. Distance learners tend to be more self motivated (as this is almost a pre-requisite of successful online learning). There are many other factors, including design interface, etc., but overall, the distance learning experience is as good, if not better in many ways, than the traditional environment.
If you are interested in more research concerning distance learning, there is a lot out there-if you have access to databases, you may want to search psycInfo, ERIC, etc.
Hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Elaine Bontempi
Online Course Developer
University of Oklahoma

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