Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

Online learning-for students and for teachers-is one of the fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology. The National Center for Education Statistics (2008) estimated that the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05.

On the basis of amore recent district survey, Picciano and Seaman (2009) estimated that more than a million K-12 students took online courses in school year 2007-08.Online learning overlaps with the broader category of distance learning, which encompasses earlier technologies such as correspondence courses, educational television and video conferencing.

Earlier studies of distance learning concluded that these technologies were not significantly different from regular classroom learning in terms of effectiveness. Policy-makers reasoned that if online instruction is no worse than traditional instruction in terms of student outcomes, then online education initiatives could be justified on the basis of cost efficiency or need to provide access to learners in settings where face-to-face instruction is not feasible.

The question of the relative effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction needs to be revisited, however, in light of today's online learning applications. Many can take advantage of a wide range of Web resources, including not only multimedia but also Web-based applications and new collaboration technologies. These forms of online learning are a far cry from the televised broadcasts and videoconferencing that characterized earlier generations of distance education. Moreover, interest in hybrid approaches that blend in-class and online activities is increasing. Policy-makers and practitioners want to know about the effectiveness of Internet-based, interactive online learning approaches and need information about the conditions under which online learning is effective.

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that

• contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition,
• measured student learning outcomes,
• used a rigorous research design, and
• provided adequate information to calculate an effect size.

As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a technique for combining the results of multiple experiments or quasi-experiments to obtain a composite estimate of the size of the effect.

The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes-measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation-was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face.

Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K-12students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

Source: Center for Technology in Learning, Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia and Karla Jones, 2009