Virtual This Virtual That - Can we bury it, already...

If I hear or read the term virtual education, virtual learning, or virtual university one more time I think I will implode into the virtual ether.

Consider the following two entries:

vir·tu·al Pronunciation Key (vûrch-l) adj.
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name: the virtual extinction of the buffalo.

2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.

What does using this term say? It says, "Hey, come to our school where we really don't exist, at least not in a factual form...and your education will be a prduct of the imagination". I know, some will say that because of the use of computers as the tool of delivery, that the term virtual is approrpriate. Heaven help us if we have come to describe education and learning around the descriptor of the delivery mode.

What I am convinced started as some marketing wizbang’s great idea (read: internet boom induced stupor) has turned into a seriously misused and unflattering moniker for distance learning institutions. There is nothing "virtual" about the education I received through distance means, nor the one in which I participate as a teacher. It is real, substantive, verifiable, of matter, and existent in the material world. Not having brick and mortar classrooms in no way takes away from the material existence and processes of a distance based school.

I think the furtherance of the terms virtual learning or virtual university only plays into the virtual minds of the detractors. I can not think of a single example of where the term virtual serves to bolster the image and substance of the learning that takes place through distance means.

The marketing value, whatever it was, has long ago fallen short of the useful purpose it currently serves. I say it is time to dry this puppy off and put it to bed.