Serena Williams, online student

Earlier this week, American tennis player Serena Williams won her first round match at the U.S. Open. Not much of a surprise, really, despite her inactivity over the past year. After the match, she was interviewed live on television. The interviewer made a comment about students going back to school soon and Serena said that she, too, was going back to school as an online student. The interviewer asked how she had time for that and Serena jokingly said that maybe she would have her sister, Venus, do the work in her online class because she is smarter. It was a joke, but it's not too far off a perception many people have about online learning –– that because students are not physically in a classroom, it's easy to have someone else do the work. It's a variation on Peter Steiner's "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" cartoon.