Comparisons were made of the class discussions from two graduate courses related to infants with disabilities and home visiting practice. Students were enrolled in either a traditional on-campus course that met weekly or an online course that engaged students asynchronously. Both groups of students also made weekly home visits to a family with an infant/toddler with identified delays/disabilities. Discourse patterns and analyses of the cognitive complexity of student and instructor contributions to class discussions revealed the instructor's domination of discussions on-campus and the students' tendencies to use lower levels of critical thinking. Despite similar student demographics and academic outcomes, the online students initiated more discussions and used significantly longer speaking turns and questions than on-campus students, on par with the online instructor, and had contributions that reflected a closer match to the instructor at the higher levels of critical thinking. Implications are discussed for training early interventionists using distance education.