Online delivery has the potential to offer significant benefits in achieving multiple goals related to sustainable education. For example, students from a variety of backgrounds can access educational opportunity, allowing for vast dissemination of education. In addition, the methods employed in online learning are generally much lower in carbon intensity, providing an added operational benefit to online education. Beyond these stated benefits, we must also identify what components of online education are deemed effective from the student's perspective. This article summarizes a recent study conducted by the authors on overall student self-assessment of learning at a major online university, and compares these results with general pedagogical assumptions regarding the perceived benefits of online learning. The goal is to highlight what factors students find important in ensuring quality learning outcomes in the online learning environment. The extension of this work is to link successful components of online delivery to the general achievement of sustainability in education delivery methods.