Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom

A pretty catchy title for an online article published by the New York Times...I received an email from Aaron linking to this article, which referenced a 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education.

Although the report is somewhat long, what I found interesting was their approach to this research. They did a systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008, which identified over 1,000 empirical studies of online learning. After screening for the following, a meta-analysis was done:

1. contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition
2. measured student learning outcomes
3. used a rigorous research design
4. provided adequate information to calcuate and effect size

The result of the meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

Kudos to those involved in this research. Although I'm not a researcher myself, it was eye-opening for me to read through how they conducted the meta-analysis and some of the key findings like "Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction."

Another thought that came through my mind was that if the researchers only compiled and analyzed literature searches of other studies, there might be a bias towards online learning because only mainly those in the DL field would be more prone to work on publishing online research studies. Nonetheless, I still think this study is definitely a big step forward for those of us who have seen first hand how powerful online education can be when done right and are advocates of online education.