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[turbojet]

This so called 'study' seems to me biased and one sided. What do you think ? To me, online education can enhance traditional college education to the point where students can read the lecture at home, as well as take exams at home, and can come to class ready to discuss ( perhaps in small groups ) what was covered. See short article below.


"Rushing Too Fast to Online Learning? Outcomes of Internet Versus Face-to-Face Instruction"

ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2010)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100628092756.htm

[medieval_spectacle]

I'd have to go look at the study more carefully, but as someone who's teaching entirely online, right off the bat I'd say yes, there are serious issues with putting "traditional" style classes online with no modification. It's a different delivery method, and courses accordingly need to be constructed differently. Face to face methods just aren't going to work in online courses. Yes, online instruction can enhance traditional education, but teaching methods need to be adapted.

[prytania3]

Make me.

[larryc]

Make me.

OP, if you have a juicy stock market tip you might be able to persuade her.

[duchess_of_malfi]

The study compared a face-to-face lecture class with a class in which students viewed a recorded version of the same lecture online.  This is more similar to the distance-learning or "TV professor" modes that universities have been using for many years than to what I think of as an online class.  

I don't know what most instructors do with their online classes, so I don't know if this is a useful comparison or not.  But "so-called study" and "biased" are not meaningful criticisms unless you can find a way in which bad research design influenced the outcome.  That's different from arguing that the study did not make what you consider to be a meaningful comparison or that you simply don't like the results of the study.

[melba_frilkins]

What exactly did they use as their measure of student success? They didn't specify in the article (the summary by Science Daily), nor the abstract.

What I find interesting about my response to the research is that I balk at that notion that they did use random assignment to the online/non-online groups. Though random assignment is important for experimental control, after years of teaching online, I think that its success depends so much on the students coming in. That is, online education is successful only when students do self-select and not if you randomly throw students in.

But perhaps that is the point of the article. Online delivery is not for everyone. It should only be an option, not something that students are forced into by scheduling or circumstances.