One of the things that always strikes me about any field of endeavor is how a small number of individuals can exert a significant impact on the development of that field. This has definitely been true for the domain of online education. In each chapter, you will find a short description of a person who has influenced this field on a national or international scale. The description of each person includes a link to their web site where you can learn more about their work and background. You will find each of them to be a rich source of ideas and information about online education.
This list includes (in order of appearance):
In addition to these specific individuals, most web sites included as examples in the chapters usually have one or two people responsible for their original development and implementation. To the extent that these sites have been used by zillions of students and teachers, they too have played a major role in defining the nature of learning in cyberspace.
Of course this handful of individuals only represents a small sampling of the thousands of people who have influenced the development of online education in their own institutions or local areas.
The bottom line is that cyberspace is not about technology, but about human creativity, human spirit, and compassion for others.