Does learning really happen in online learning?

With the rapid development of online education in China, how to improve the quality of online education has been the focus of education research. In the internet teaching practice, how do learners keep learning online? Does learning really happen during the process? This article attempts to discuss about the problem from three parts. The first part concludes the conditions in which online learning happens as well as the three typical characteristics of online learning from the views of knowledge and learning. The second part analyses the main characteristics of Chinese students´ online learning based on the course "technology document retrieval" which combined with traditional and online learning. And the third part carries out the strategic advice for online teachers in China to help transform the online learning method of students based on analysis and comparison.