Having participated in a couple of online courses, I can think of a few things. first, it needs to be really easy to PM people (like, have links on the sidebar to PM each person in the class). Because there's a lot of discussion, yes, but there's also a lot of needing to talk to a specific person about specific things that you don't want to clutter up the main group. Second, it needs to be really easy to download stuff (syllabi, articles, videos, etc.) Also, there needs to be group settings within the class--some way to facilitate group projects, small group discussion, etc. For example, the ability for the instructor to post a question/discussion topic that actually posts x number of times (x being the number of small groups) and each person only gets the one for their particular group show up on their reading page. Or for the link-on-the-side thing, links to PM the instructor and PM each group (where sending a PM to that group automatically sends the message out to everyone in the group, and replies automatically go to everyone in the group). Those would probably require some fancy coding, but that's the only function of the class websites I've used that DW doesn't duplicate already in some way.