This paper addresses the need for educators to re-conceptualize the way we teach in an online environment. The call for this stems from a need to recognize the heterogeneous nature of the learners we engage. The online educator faces not just the challenge of meeting the needs of a multi-cultural audience and increasingly an audience of differing ages but further a group of students who are geographically and temporally diverse.

This paper will argue that online learning is both challenged by and uniquely capable of meeting the needs of this heterogeneous learning community, but not if it is simply conceptualized as a repackaging of traditional pedagogic modes of delivery in order that they operate in a virtual environment.

High initial production costs require the development of an enduring educational architecture which calls for the online educator to be both creative and aware of the unique needs of this new heterogeneous community and to develop materials that are tailored specifically to these learners. The material needs not only to cater to learners who display each of Gardner's (1983) multiple intelligences, but must also be able to adapt to the geographic and temporal differences that obtain in each learner's physical environment.