Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
Colleagues/ A Wednesday PM (CT) Discovery !! /Gerry New York Times / August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm / Updated: 1:29 pm / Steve Lohr A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: "On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." [snip] Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.
That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.<<<
[snip] Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools. The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more "learning by doing," which many students find more engaging and useful. [more] Links to the original NYTimes article and the full DOEd report available from [ http://tinyurl.com/nk97w8 ] Enjoy ! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed / Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace
Hi Folks Has anyone suggested that the brick and click comparisons may be measuring the wrong variables. with the changing nature of knowledge and knowledge acquisition? In other words are the studies measuring what could be measured using an old lens and the easiest variables to assess, like the drunk looking for keys where the light is rather than in the dark where they were dropped? Are math and reading scores meaningful in the new world of problem-based learning and knowledge sharing around social networks? Are these scores perpetuating a system by moving bricks into clicks rather than determining what the new metrics should be whether or not they are comparable? thoughts? tom tom abeles
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:35:38 -0500 From: gerrymck@iastate.edu To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; SOCNET@LISTS.UFL.EDU; HMC@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU CC: gerrymck@mail.adp.iastate.edu Subject: [Air-L] Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
Colleagues/
A Wednesday PM (CT) Discovery !!
/Gerry
New York Times / August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm / Updated: 1:29 pm / Steve Lohr
A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion:
"On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."
[snip]
Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.
That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.<<<
[snip]
Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools. The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more "learning by doing," which many students find more engaging and useful.
[more]
Links to the original NYTimes article and the full DOEd report available from
Enjoy !
/Gerry
Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu
There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying
The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed /
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_________________________________________________________________ Windows Live: Keep your friends up to date with what you do online. http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON...
I think this is pretty easy to see how we could twist this. The basic supposition is likely that the two populations differ in my experience. Online classes tend to divide into two populations, students that have to be there to make up or catch up, and students that are trying to get ahead, and usually there are more over- achievers than underachievers around a 2-1 bias i'm guessing. In my classes, there tends to be more students doing A quality work in online classes, than f2f. F2F i suspect is a more normal population. So I'd argue that the bimodality with a larger mode of overachievers in online classes versus a more normal distribution in the f2f classes, might explain this. It also explains why online classes seem to work very well for some students, usually students that are self- motivated, and in my experience, somewhat less well for students that do not have the same degree of motivation to do the work. Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee http://wiki.tmttlt.com http://www.tmttlt.com Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student. -George Iles
On Aug 19, 2009, at 2:56 PM, tom abeles wrote:
Has anyone suggested that the brick and click comparisons may be measuring the wrong variables. with the changing nature of knowledge and knowledge acquisition? In other words are the studies measuring what could be measured using an old lens and the easiest variables to assess, like the drunk looking for keys where the light is rather than in the dark where they were dropped?
From my reading, the (meta) study was of 99 cases of a course that had two sections - an online section and a non-online section. So yes, they were measuring by the old standard, and yes, the new approach did old things better than the old way. In someway, it addresses faculty's apprehension of "doing worse" rather "doing better." (It also illustrates the first law of "new media" - the first content of new media is old media. Once faculty get comfortable with the newer format, often they get quite innovative. And yes, as iTunes U and YouTube show, often they fossilize their old methods. Steve
Oops, forgot that pesky new policy and responded only to Gerry. Anyway, here are my concerns about this news. First, I wonder if the researchers controlled for student ability and motivation. Online students tend to be the more bright and motivated ones. Second, I wonder if they controlled for amount of student-teacher interaction. I suspect that most online teachers are adjuncts and non- tenured folks from whom much student interaction time can be demanded, and student-instructor interaction seems unavoidable in online courses, much as online instructors might seek to limit it. (At least, that was true in the one I took. My professor vigorously tried to avoid or at least lessen interaction, but had a hard time doing so.) On the other hand, most off-line teaching is low in student-teacher interaction. Research indicates that even most discussion section teaching is lecturing--the same kind of thing you'd find in a large lecture hall . . . or on a TV delivering distance ed. courses for that matter. In light of that, it is little wonder that students might do better online, given that interaction is unavoidable in online courses. If amount of interaction is the cause of the difference found here, it is then misleading to pose this as a difference between online and "face-to-face" teaching, and unfortunate that it does so, because I'm sure that truly discussion-focused face-to-face teaching trumps online teaching, at least as its found in the majority of places today. And there's no guarantee that online teaching will maintain its level of student-instructor interaction--soon we'll have teaching via video- conferencing and with it a likely increased presence of lecturing and its equivalents online. --Christian Nelson On Aug 19, 2009, at 2:35 PM, McKiernan, Gerard [LIB] wrote:
Colleagues/
A Wednesday PM (CT) Discovery !!
/Gerry
New York Times / August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm / Updated: 1:29 pm / Steve Lohr
A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion:
"On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."
[snip]
Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.
That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.<<<
[snip]
Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools. The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more "learning by doing," which many students find more engaging and useful.
[more]
Links to the original NYTimes article and the full DOEd report available from
Enjoy !
/Gerry
Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu
There Are No Answers, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying
The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed /
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (5)
-
Christian Nelson -
jeremy hunsinger -
McKiernan, Gerard [LIB] -
Steve Cavrak -
tom abeles