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Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say

In a much-debated 1983 essay on distance learning, Richard E. Clark, a professor of educational
psychology at the University of Southern California, argued that it was beside the point to ask whether
distance education is better or worse than the traditional classroom. The medium isn’t the crucial
variable, Mr. Clark wrote. What is important is to look at the effectiveness of specific instructional
strategies, regardless of how those strategies are delivered.

Last week, more than 25 years after Mr. Clark’s provocation, the U.S. Department of Education released
a report that, at least at first glance, carries a strong message about the medium: Students learn more
effectively in online settings. Most powerful of all appear to be “blended” courses that offer both faceto-
face and online elements. Previous research has generally found that online and offline courses are
equally effective.

But even though the report, which synthesized data from several dozen high-quality studies, was framed
and publicized as a circuit board-versus-chalkboard showdown, its authors do not view themselves as
having flouted Mr. Clark’s principles. On the contrary: Mr. Clark served as a technical adviser to the
project, and the report’s lead author says that Mr. Clark’s basic insights are correct.

“This report should not be interpreted as saying that one medium is better than another,” says Barbara
Means, a director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a California research
firm that conducted the project under contract with the Education Department. “This should not be
interpreted as saying that computers are better than professors.”

Instead, Ms. Means says, the study offers evidence that particular kinds of online instructional
techniques are effective—and some of those techniques, she suggests, could theoretically be imported
into old-fashioned chalkboard classrooms. For example, the study found that in online courses, students
often spend more time directly engaging with the course content than do their counterparts in traditional
classrooms. But in theory, there is no reason why traditional courses could not be redesigned to increase
students’ “time on task.”

By DAVID GLENN

Full Report: http://mus.edu/news/OnlineEdStudy.pdf

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