reasonably close
I had to install a bunch of extra packages, but I can participate in online classwork and listen to lectures on my laptop running Ubuntu. Colorado State's online course website runs on a mix of Java and Silverlight (honestly, not a mix I ever expected). For Linux, Moonlight isn't complete or perfect but I can hear the lecture audio and see the slides; the fact that I can't see the lecture doesn't seem that big a deal.
Actually, it would seem like a big deal, since slides + audio doesn't cover (for instance) whiteboard scribblings... except that they've got a pretty neat setup in the classroom that's being recorded. The professor has some kind of touchscreen with a stylus in front of him. He has PowerPoint slides, but can also annotate the screen with the stylus, or switch off the slides entirely and write on the screen like a whiteboard. Whatever happens on that screen gets projected in front of the class, and captured separately as a slideshow: that's the part I can see on my laptop. So I can't see the professor walking around on the screen, but it doesn't really matter.
I would like to be able to participate in the lecture as it happens, but of course the whole reason I'm doing this online is that I can't be there at 11am or whenever - so I could have nothing, or I can have this. This isn't bad.
Actually, it would seem like a big deal, since slides + audio doesn't cover (for instance) whiteboard scribblings... except that they've got a pretty neat setup in the classroom that's being recorded. The professor has some kind of touchscreen with a stylus in front of him. He has PowerPoint slides, but can also annotate the screen with the stylus, or switch off the slides entirely and write on the screen like a whiteboard. Whatever happens on that screen gets projected in front of the class, and captured separately as a slideshow: that's the part I can see on my laptop. So I can't see the professor walking around on the screen, but it doesn't really matter.
I would like to be able to participate in the lecture as it happens, but of course the whole reason I'm doing this online is that I can't be there at 11am or whenever - so I could have nothing, or I can have this. This isn't bad.