When a teacher is present in person, students often respond and understand different lessons better then they do when they are reading it out of a textbook or learning a computerized lesson online. Online education doesn't necessarily have this personal touch as students study the different lessons in a course online. However, online colleges are trying to remedy this by creating hot lines that allow students to call and talk to professors or their teaching assistants, or even have video chat conferences or lectures with them via new forms of communication technology like Skype.
Another downside of eLearning is that students who are taking online courses can't personally interact with other students and learn from them in their own ways. Seeing other students who have been going over a lesson plan ask questions and interact with the professor and each other in lessons or activities about the material teaches students in a more immersive way then any type of eLearning. While videos of the lesson plan can be presented to help teach students who are learning online, this student to student classroom interaction is more or less lost through the isolated eLearning environment.
It is difficult to regulate if students cheat or not or actually learn the material within the eLearning environment, as when a test is given or a paper is written the Internet allows answers to be provided with an easy search, which doesn't force or encourage the student to actually learn the material on their own. While many online colleges and courses force students to come into actual classrooms in person to take tests, many satellite students who live hundreds if not thousand of miles away cannot do that, defeating the purpose of online learning. Much of the effectiveness of eLearning is based on the honor code in these circumstances and students who really want to learn rather then just pass the course.