[LINK] 'Online Education Beats Classroom'

[Tom Worthington]

stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> US Department of Education: Online Education Beats Classroom...

The report is "Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning
A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies" by Barbara Means, 
  Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, Karla Jones, Center for 
Technology in Learning, published by US Department of Education, Office 
of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Policy and Program 
Studies Service, May 2009: 
<http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf<http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf>.

The executive summary of the report in a simple web format (minus 
footnotes) I have extracted at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/08/evaluation-of-online-learning.html>

The study suggests that online learning is more effective than face to 
face classroom learning, that blended learning is no more effective than 
purely online learning and that video and online quizzes do not improve 
online learning.

But it should be noted that the US study has limitations: it is a "meta" 
analysis, that is analysis of previous results, not new data collection. 
Also this was only for K-12 students and may not be applicable to 
vocational, university or adult learning.

That said, these are welcome messages for someone, such as myself, who 
has given up classroom teaching (and more recently given up blended 
teaching), opting for pure online learning with no video or quizzes. But 
I can't claim that this is out of some insight into the effectiveness of 
the andragogy, just that I did not enjoy giving lectures.

The blended mode I thought a good idea, but it was not popular with the 
students, who did not want to attend, or with educational 
administrators, who did not want to pay he additional cost for it. 
Similarly, video and online quizzes were too expensive and tedious to 
create. That left essentially an online version of old fashioned 
education: read this, discuss that, do this exercise and hand it in for 
marking. That does not seem such a radical innovation.

I will discuss this in "Mentored and Collaborative e-Learning for 
Postgraduate Professional Education", for the Computer Science Seminar, 
The Australian National University, Computer Science and Information 
Technology Building, Canberra, 4pm, 27 August 2009 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/collaborative_e_learning/>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 0261259654
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274