From Jan Schwartz
Recently the U.S. Department of Education published a report titled, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. You can download it here. 
The report synthesized data from 176 well-designed studies. The findings were that students learn as well, or better, in online environments, which was actually no surprise to me since many of these studies were ones I used for my thesis. What I find most interesting is thinking about why that is so. I don’t believe the technology matters as much as the instructional techniques; and I think teaching online forces teachers to rethink how they teach and to really think through what needs to happen in order for students to learn. This thinking goes back to a 1983 essay, Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media, written by Richard E. Clark, Ph.D., a University of Southern California professor of educational psychology. He said that the effectiveness of specific instructional strategies was much more important than the medium. This meta-analysis concurs.
Many teachers are resistant to online instruction because they don’t understand the technology or they don’t want to change how they currently teach. Moving from the classroom to an online environment forces one to relinquish the “sage on the stage” persona, and trade it in for the “guide on the side” persona–online learning is student centric, whereas classroom learning is teacher centric–huge difference!
Another tidbit from this report is that students in medical science and related health care fields who engage in online learning do learn well in this environment.
What are your experiences/thoughts/ideas on this topic?
