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August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
By STEVE LOHR
(date of access October 3, 2012)
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."
The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996
to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and
adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.
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.
"The study's major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than
nothing -- it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction," said Barbara Means, the study's
lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.
This hardly means that we'll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online
education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.
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.
"We are at an inflection point in online education," said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State
University's Online and Extended Campus program.
The biggest near-term growth, Mr. Regier predicts, will be in continuing education programs. Today,
Arizona State has 5,000 students in its continuing education programs, both through in-person classes
and online. In three to five years, he estimates, that number could triple, with nearly all the growth coming
online.
But Mr. Regier also thinks online education will continue to make further inroads in transforming college
campuses as well. Universities -- and many K-12 schools -- now widely use online learning management
systems, like Blackboard or the open-source Moodle. But that is mostly for posting assignments, reading
lists, and class schedules and hosting some Web discussion boards.
Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking
technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. For example, it will be
assumed that college students know the basics of calculus, and the classroom time will focus on applying
the math to real-world problems -- perhaps in exploring the physics of climate change or modeling trends
in stock prices, he said.
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"The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways," Mr. Regier
said. "People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are
wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to
occur in a community."
Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
May 22, 2011 The Chronicle of Higher Education
(date of access October 3, 2012)
Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online?
By Rob Jenkins
Online learning has become the third rail in American higher-education politics: Step on it and you're
toast. That's especially true at community colleges, where many leaders have embraced online courses
with an almost religious fervor. And we all know why. It's not because anyone is seriously arguing that
online classes are consistently better than the face-to-face versions. And it's not even necessarily
because students are clamoring for them (although they're clearly popular in certain segments of the
population, such as stay-at-home parents, people with full-time jobs, and deployed members of the armed
forces). It's because colleges can produce online courses much more cheaply while charging roughly the
same tuition.
In other words, at many community colleges, online classes constitute the proverbial cash cow. And if you
say anything about them—other than that we should offer more and more, forever and ever, virtual worlds
without end, amen—then you will be branded as a heretic, ridiculed as a neo-Luddite, and shunned.
At least it sometimes seems that way. But isn't it time that we had an honest national conversation about
online learning? With countless studies showing success rates in online courses of only 50 per cent—as
opposed to 70-to-75 percent for comparable face-to-face classes— isn't it time we asked ourselves some
serious questions? Such as: Should every course be taught online? And should we allow every student—
or any student who wishes to—to take online courses?
I sometimes joke with my first-year students, many of whom are seeking admission to our community
college's top-flight nursing program, that we used to offer an anatomy lab online until we started receiving
complaints from people whose cats were missing. No doubt that joke is in poor taste, but it illustrates a
point that seems to me self-evident: We can't teach everything online, nor should we try.
To all of you out there shaking your heads at my ignorance, can we perhaps find common ground? Can
we agree that none of us would want to be operated on by surgeons who received all of their medical
training online? If so, then perhaps we can agree that online learning has its limitations. The only debate
is over where those limits lie.
That debate should be reserved for faculty members and academic administrators. The question is not
whether online courses are more cost efficient (we already know that they are) or whether students like
them. The only important question to ask about how particular courses and programs should be taught is,
What is in the best interests of students academically?
I'll be the first to acknowledge that I don't always know the answer, and to admit that I've been wrong in
the past. A few years ago, when we attempted to place an entire associate degree online, my college
found itself struggling with a couple of courses in particular. One was our public-speaking course, which
happened to be housed in the department that I chaired at the time.
Conventional wisdom back then dictated that you couldn't really teach a speech course online. To whom
would the students give their speeches? How would they collectively become engaged as audiences or
learn to analyze the speeches of others, as they do in a traditional classroom? I sided with the
establishment. Speech, I decided, was just one of those courses that students would have to come to
campus to take.
That is, until one of the faculty members in my department took it upon herself to solve the problem,
through a combination of strategies that required students to videotape themselves, give speeches in
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front of church, school, or civic organizations, and observe and evaluate similar speeches by others. Her
online public-speaking course became the template not just for our college but for the entire state system.
I still don't think an online speech course is quite as good as the face-to-face kind. It seems to me that
there are distinct advantages to being in the same room with the professor and other students; that there
are dynamics and experiences associated with the brick-and-mortar classroom that can't quite be
duplicated via the Internet. But an online speech course can be almost as good. Done well, it could
certainly provide students with the necessary knowledge, and teach them the requisite skills.
I think that's where we are with most online courses: They're not quite as good as face-to-face, but they're
close enough. Are some of them just as good? No doubt. Might some be even better? Possibly. But a
few, at least, should probably not be taught at all—"Advanced Brain Surgery" would be high on my list—
and most are merely good enough.
For students who aren't able to attend college in the traditional way, "good enough" can be a godsend.
But that doesn't mean that all students, or any student who wants to, should take online courses. Our
collective failure to recognize that fundamental reality is primarily responsible for the high failure rates we
see in online courses.
Years ago, when I was at another institution, and the online revolution was just gathering momentum, we
were already noting that our online offerings had success rates that were much lower than in face-to-face
sections. I recommended in a meeting of department heads that we consider instituting some sort of
front-door controls. After all, we routinely test entering students to determine whether they're prepared for
college-level math and writing courses; why not test them to see if they can handle online courses?
My suggestion was met with stony silence. Then the administrator running the meeting let me know, in no
uncertain terms, that the college would never go for that idea, because it would limit online enrollment at a
time when growth was needed for budget reasons.
In other words, "We don't care what happens to students at the end of the class. We just need them to
sign up and stay on the roster long enough to count as enrolled." I never broached the topic again, nor to
my knowledge did anyone else at that college. I imagine that many other professors made the same
suggestion at other colleges, where it was similarly shot down.
But it's time to talk about it now. Online enrollments across the country are strong and growing, while
success rates stay about the same: abysmal. I attended a session at the "Innovations 2011" conference a
couple of months ago, held in San Diego by the League for Innovation in the Community College, where I
learned that some colleges were beginning to experiment with the kinds of controls I recommended.
Software companies now market products designed to determine, up front, whether students can handle
the workload, the pedagogical approach (heavy on reading), and the technical demands of the online
environment, and some of those products have shown promise. That sort of approach just makes a world
of sense.
Unfortunately, many institutions still shy away from anything like that, because they're afraid of losing
enrollment. Some are even complicit in perpetuating the notions that any student can succeed in online
courses and that as many as possible should be encouraged to try. (I'm sure we've all seen multiple
variations on the "Go to college in your pj's" marketing campaign.)
I'd like us to be more honest with students. Generally speaking, online courses are harder than face-toface ones, not easier. Online courses require a tremendous amount of self-discipline and no small
amount of academic ability and technical competence. They're probably not for everyone, and I think we
need to acknowledge as much to students and to ourselves.
No one doubts that within a decade, if not sooner, most courses will have an online component. I don't
have a problem with that. For the past couple of years, I've gradually been putting more and more of my
course materials online. I agree with those who think that hybrid courses, incorporating face-to-face and
electronic elements, are the future. Some concepts can be conveyed quite well online, while others really
need to be taught in a traditional classroom.
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In the meantime, though, we need to think long and hard about which courses should be taught fully
online, and which students belong in online courses. If students and their prospective employers ever
begin to suspect that, in our rush to offer everything online, we have oversold and underdelivered, then
it's going to be too late for us to have that discussion. Politicians will have it for us.
Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College. He blogs at
www.nccforum.org and writes monthly for the community-college column of The Chronicle. His book,
"Building a Career in America's Community Colleges," has just been published by the American
Association of Community Colleges and the Community College Press.
Study: Online Learning Outcomes Similar to Classroom Results
Universities with shrinking budgets could consider online education to save money.
By Ryan Lytle
July 25, 2012
(date of access October 3, 2012)
Copyright © 2012 U.S.News & World Report LP All rights reserved.
US News.com
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/07/25/study-online-learning-outcomessimilar-to-classroom-results
A recent study shows similar outcomes between traditional learning and interactive online learning.
Critics of online learning claim that students are exposed to an inferior education when compared to
traditional in-class instruction, but a recent study from Ithaka S+R, a strategic consulting and research
nonprofit, questions this notion.
The report, "Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials," notes
that students who utilize interactive online learning—or hybrid learning—produce equivalent, or better,
results than students participating in face-to-face education.
Monitoring 605 college students taking the same introductory statistics course at six public universities—
including the University at Albany—SUNY, SUNY Institute of Technology—Utica/Rome, the University of
Maryland—Baltimore County, Towson University, CUNY—Baruch College, and CUNY—City College—
during fall 2011, researchers split the students into two groups. One group completed the course in a
traditional format, while the second group completed an online component complemented with an hour of
in-class instruction each week.
Students were asked to complete a series of tests before and after the course, and researchers found
that "hybrid-format students did perform slightly better than traditional format students" on outcomes
including final exam scores and overall course pass rates, according to the report.
The report's authors note that while the students who participated in the hybrid group performed
marginally better than students in the traditional group overall, the differences in learning outcomes are
not "statistically significant" between the two groups. And although the researchers were able to
successfully randomize students in both groups, based on factors including age, gender, ethnicity,
academic background, and family income, they could not control for differences in teacher quality.
Students learn more from active discussions than from traditional lectures, and they need instructors who
can engage them in the material, notes Diane Johnson, assistant director of faculty services at the Center
for Online Learning at Florida's St. Leo University, who has spent more than 12 years teaching online,
traditional, and hybrid courses.
"Teacher quality is still a very important part of success in an online course, but so, too, is the course
design," Johnson says. "Despite the delivery mechanism of the class, faculty members need to show
students they care and that they aren't just a number. The ones that do this will help students to learn."
With universities facing shrinking budgets, this report may make the case for higher education
professionals to consider plans to implement more courses with an online component—and to train
faculty members to lead these interactive learning communities.
"Online learning … holds the promise of broadening access to higher education to more individuals, while
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also lowering costs for students," notes Deanna Marcum, managing director of Ithaka S+R, in the report's
preface. "The results of this study are remarkable; they show comparable learning outcomes for this basic
[statistics] course, with a promise of cost savings and productivity gains over time."
College Professors Fearful of Online Education Growth
A recent study reflects faculty members' anxieties and doubts about online courses.
By Ryan Lytle
July 6, 2012
(date of access October 3, 2012)
A recent survey shows that a majority of college faculty are frightened by the growth of online education.
Online education continues its meteoric rise on college campuses, and many faculty members are
frightened by its growth and prevalence, notes a recent study by Inside Higher Ed and the Babson Survey
Research Group, which has spent more than a decade studying online education.
The report, which surveyed 4,564 faculty members, reveals that 58 percent of respondents "described
themselves as filled more with fear than with excitement" over the growth of online courses within higher
education.
The fears of college faculty are sustained by the consistent rise in popularity of online education during
the past decade. The number of college students enrolled in at least one online course increased for the
ninth straight year, with more than 6.1 million students taking an online course during fall 2010—a 10.1
percent increase over fall 2009, according to a separate Babson report.
While some of these fears could be attributed to professors not seeing the benefits of digital education,
others may worry that instructors could be replaced altogether by online courses, says Dan Johnson, a
senior lecturer at Wake Forest University.
"It's the idea of being able to do with technology what has been done with people in the past," Johnson
says. "There is a very real fear that this will be cutting into the education system and actually not just
supplementing instructors but replacing them."
Although opinions differ between professors who have worked with an online component and those who
have not, 66 percent of all faculty members surveyed say that the learning outcomes of online courses
are inferior, compared to traditional courses. Among faculty members who teach online courses
exclusively, 39 percent note that online courses produce inferior learning outcomes.
But instead of making comparisons on learning outcomes between online courses and classroom
courses, educators should base opinions on the actual course design, says Diane Johnson, assistant
director of faculty services at the Center for Online Learning at St. Leo University.
"It's all based on how the course is designed," she says. "You can't compare one course with another
without looking at instructional design, whether it's face to face or online."
Wake Forest's Johnson agrees, noting that educators are making judgments and comparisons between
traditional courses and online courses, when each requires "different assessments and evaluations."
"I could easily put together a series of assessments that would look at online [courses] versus brick-andmortar [courses], and you would see much better outcomes for online," he says. "I could also create a
different set of evaluations, and we would clearly see better benefits in a brick-and-mortar environment.
We just don't know what we're looking for."
The future of online education looks bright, though, according to some full-time professors—which
accounted for roughly three-fourths of all faculty surveyed. Forty percent reported that online courses
have the potential to match in-class instruction for learning outcomes.
But, much like in face-to-face learning environments, the success of the course is dependent on the
quality of the instructor, notes Julanna Gilbert, executive director of the Office of Teaching and Learning
at the University of Denver.
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"For the future, it's about getting enough people enough professional development so they can also teach
high-quality online courses," Gilbert says. "You still need a faculty member because you still need
feedback."
In order for faculty members to fully embrace online education in traditional settings, though, they must
stop resisting these changes in technology, Wake Forest's Johnson says.
"We can argue against it all we want," he says. "But if we're spending all our time arguing … we lose the
ability to help shape it so that it goes in the direction that's helpful for the students. We can turn online
learning into a marvel of the 21st century, or we can turn it into a horrible mistake."
Copyright © 2012 U.S.News & World Report LP All rights reserved.
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/07/06/college-professors-fearful-ofonline-education-growth
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Date of Access: 7/24/12May 6, 2012
Got a Computer? Get a Degree.
Andres G. Farfan for The New York Times
Last week, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a new nonprofit
partnership to offer free online courses. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery
and a grade, but no official credit.
Should Harvard and M.I.T. offer credit for these courses and even allow students to obtain their degrees
online? Indeed, doesn’t it make more sense for elite colleges and universities to do this?
The Promise of Lower Costs
Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at
Ohio University, is the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
Updated May 7, 2012, 3:04 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Date of Access: 7/24/12
Competition is wonderful. A Stanford professor, Sebastian Thrun, starts his own online instructional
company and gets a six-digit number of participants. No doubt worried about the implications of this,
Stanford teams with Princeton, Michigan and Penn to offer free online courses. Afraid of being left out,
Harvard now has teamed with M.I.T. High quality, rigorous courses are appearing online. This joins other
pioneering efforts at low price instruction: StraighterLine, Khan Academy, the Saylor Foundation’s free
courses, etc. And it also joins a growing for-profit industry presence that, despite publicity to the contrary,
on the whole is student-centered and often high quality, although by no means free.
Previous university efforts have floundered because of the anti-innovation culture of higher education,
especially manifested in faculty resistance. However, these new courses are free, and grades and
“certificates” are granted. There are two obstacles, however, limiting the potential success of these
ventures. First, students and employers want “diplomas” (skill certification), which random certificates for
individual courses probably will not meet. Second, for large numbers, college is as much a socialization
and networking as an intellectual exercise, and such accoutrements of college life as booze and sex are
hard to provide online.
Nonetheless, this has great promise, leading to lower cost quality higher education by sidestepping the
three greatest enemies to achieving that objective: the federal government (through their perverse
financial incentives via dysfunctional student aid programs and myriad regulatory obstacles), the
accreditation agencies (with their barriers to entry), and the faculty of traditional colleges. These
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providers, whose students are not dependent on federal financial aid, can just say no to traditional
accreditation and start their own accrediting agency or rely on others (i.e., Underwriters Laboratories,
Educational Testing Service, ACT) to bundle together courses to provide degrees. Necessity is the
mother of invention.
Enhancement, Not Replacement
May 6, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Date of Access: 7/24/12Sean Decatur is the dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Oberlin College.
The new collaborative venture between Harvard and M.I.T. in online course offerings (edX) follows
closely on the heels of the founding of Coursera (offering online courses from Stanford, Princeton, Penn,
Michigan and Berkeley faculty) by two Stanford professors. Clearly, the next phase in the evolution of
online higher education has begun, focused on free courses made widely available by elite institutions.
Are the cornerstones of the higher education establishment starting a paradigm-shifting revolution,
making the most elite educational opportunities freely available to everyone? The keys to answering this
question are the “credits” and “credentials” being offered from these ventures.
Completion of edX courses on their own will not lead to credit toward a Harvard or M.I.T. degree. The
platform is not intended as a replacement for contact time between on-campus students and faculty, but
rather as a tool for enhancing these interactions. This is parallel to the trend in many undergraduate
programs of “flipping” classes: making basic lecture material, or repetitive grading assignments, available
for students online, to be completed before students come to the classroom, so that class time can be
focused on higher-order learning and discussion. In other words, there is a substantial difference between
the educational experience of students who take the online courses (even those with the imprimatur of an
elite institution) and the experience of students in the on-campus program supplemented by the online
materials. Because these new online courses are not a substitute for in-person classes, and it is
appropriate that students completing them do not receive credits toward a degree.
But, these new ventures do represent a significant shift in the positions of these major research
institutions in the larger landscape of higher education. While the educational experience offered on
campus in these institutions and other four-year, residential colleges is of very high quality, the reach of
these schools is limited. The online initiatives offer a way for institutions to reach out to those who are
unable to matriculate due to distance (students in China or India, for example), or to students for whom
the cost of a traditional program is prohibitive, or to those who are following a non-traditional path to
postsecondary education. The alternative credentials planned for these courses, certificates with yet-tobe determined cost, will not carry the same value as an academic credit toward a degree; but they will be
valuable for success or advancement in an increasingly competitive job market or strengthening
academic preparation for someone looking to start or re-start postsecondary studies.
While perhaps not yet a revolutionary paradigm-shift, this is an important step in market diversification
and outreach by our leading educational institutions -- these are populations that institutions such as
Harvard and MIT have largely ignored in the past -- and thus a step that was unimaginable only a
generation ago.
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A Way to Reach Minorities
Kathy Enger is the director of the Northern Lights Library Network. She has a doctorate in educational
leadership and has taught online courses in higher education for nearly a decade.
May 6, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate
Date of Access: 7/24/12
Online higher education has the capacity to lower cultural barriers that often exist at traditional colleges
and universities. When I began teaching at an online university a decade ago, I discovered to my delight
that I could engage with students from all over the world, regardless of their location, economic status or
race. Student diversity contributed to the vitality of learning and was an unexpected component of the
virtual experience. If all the students I was then teaching had been brought together in one physical
space, they would likely have become segmented into separate groups. One of my students even
commented once, “Dr. Enger, if I had met you in high school, I likely wouldn’t ever have spoken with you!”
More recently, I taught in a doctoral program at a land grant university in the northern Great Plains. Unlike
the group of students I taught earlier, this group was largely homogeneous, consisting of adult
professionals who had spent most of their lives in that region. Our program was offered on a distance
basis, some courses by interactive video and others online. Interestingly, when I taught a diversity course
online, I witnessed a homogeneous group of students experience the nonthreatening nature of the virtual
environment, a freedom similar to that experienced by the racially diverse groups I taught earlier, in this
case the freedom to express long hidden feelings of empathy for marginalized groups.
Online higher education has the potential to lower racial barriers, and for this reason alone, institutions of
higher education ought to consider offering online courses for credit and as accredited degree programs.
Education is a great equalizer. Higher education gives opportunity to those who may be marginalized or
excluded, simply because of nationality or economic status. Elite institutions, like Harvard and M.I.T., are
in a key position to expand their programs and to offer online courses for credit to people who have
traditionally been bound by race or place.
More Options Means More Learning
Jeremy Gleick is a sophomore in bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.May 7, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate
Date of Access: 7/24/12
Any system that helps people learn is worthwhile, and online courses definitely help people learn. But that
does not necessarily mean every online class should be available for college credit.
Although online courses for students who are admitted to the university and enrolled are easy and
excellent, it's difficult to make a publicly available course that is rigorous enough to justify college credit.
Some of the most complete online courses that I have seen use recorded video lectures, online readings,
essays submitted online, and even a discussion forum and discussion sections with the teaching
assistants through Skype. It all adds up to be equal to, or even better than, an in-person class.
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But if open to the public and filled with 58,000 students, such a course would be nearly impossible to run.
Stanford’s recent offering of three engineering classes (Intro to A.I., Intro to Databases and Intro to
Machine Learning) shows that in some fields, a rigorous course can be mostly automated, but it is difficult
to properly test knowledge in certain subjects: we can't make a computer grade essays yet.
While such highly recognized colleges as M.I.T. or Harvard are going to get the most attention and most
attendance with online courses, it's still worthwhile for smaller or less renowned colleges to try this. The
thing is, each college is able to develop only so many courses. If a large number of schools pursue these
offerings, they could specialize — like History of Children's Literature (lectures from the course freely
available from La Trobe University in Australia) or studies of Hannibal and the Second Punic War
(lectures also freely available, from Stanford). The more schools that get involved, the wider the range of
subjects available and the more people who will become interested: most people may not jump at the
idea of lectures and homework — until you point them to courses they have a personal interest in.
What About the Lab Work?
Walter Lewin is a professor of physics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.May 6, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Date of Access: 7/24/12
Students who take these courses online should be offered some kind of certificate -- call it a diploma. And
I think all universities should offer online courses. But no, the students should not receive an M.I.T. or a
Harvard degree from taking these courses. In my field, students must do labs, which are key to becoming
a physicist and getting a degree at M.I.T. These very sophisticated labs cannot be done at anyone's
home. They require dedicated, often very expensive, equipment.
This is not the only reason why an M.I.T. or Harvard degree should not be granted even if all the courses
have been taken online. Campus culture with the discussions with faculty and peers is a key part of
becoming an academic of the caliber worthy of an M.I.T. or Harvard degree.
I have three M.I.T. courses on the Web with video, problem sets, solutions and exams: "Newtonian
Mechanics" (a freshman course); "Electricity and Magnetism" (a freshman course); and "The Physics of
Vibrations and Waves" (a sophomore course). These courses are watched yearly by 2 million people.
According to the dozens of e-mails I receive daily, I have changed the lives of countless people with these
courses. It is a moral obligation to educate the billions of people in this world who are intellectually
starved through no fault of their own.
It would be wonderful and justified if they would be awarded a certificate provided they have "passed" the
course. But that "passing" issue is, of course, a tricky one. John tells me he did all the work and he wants
a certificate. Did he really do all the work or was it done by Mary?