The academic seminar has, since Socrates, been the core of university culture. With the advent of the educatinal technology of virtual learning environments, opportunities of performing academic seminars online have come into existence. The aim of this study was to explore the perceived advantages and disadvantages of performing academic seminars online. The advantages of online seminars were opportunities of reflection and deep learning provided by asynchronous seminars. Furthermore, students not being able to do themselves full justice in classroom seminars performed better in online seminars. The prominent disadvantage of online seminars was their lack of spontaneous real-time interaction, and lack of clues such as body language, in teacher-learner interaction. Based on the findings of the study, university teachers carefully need to consider the underlying reasons for choosing a classroom seminar or an online seminar, and prepare themselves accordingly.