Recently, I came across a discussion forum where I found there was substantial resistance to the idea of online education in physiotherapy. There were a variety of views put forth of which some were relevant concerns e.g. physiotherapy is a hands on profession and practical skills cannot be taught in an online medium while others were simply voices of inertia and resistance to change.

In recent years, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Penn, Edinburgh and dozens of other elite universities have jumped into the market for online education, signing up anyone, anywhere who wants to sign up for free Web-based courses. Primarily these courses are focused on business, management, sales and marketing, software and web based technologies, mobile app development etc. However, in 2012, in a survey of 4,564 faculty members across all types of colleges and universities, 66 percent expressed concern about the quality of online education, saying they believe what students learn is "inferior or somewhat inferior" to what they learn in a classroom. A pervasive argument that has been utilized by educators is that online education is a monologue, as opposed to a dialogue that can’t replicate “learning as a collective enterprise…a collaboration [where] students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning.” Within this article, I will categories these educators as traditionalists.

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