Having spent a fair amount of my career dealing with distance education, I always found myself defending this style of pedagogy with my traditionally inclined colleagues. When logic and research failed, the comeback was always, “…well I just could not learn without there being a teacher in the room…”

Personal learning styles and technologically-literate students aside, there had been no definitive study to prove either way if distance education was as “effective” as traditional methods. The NYT’s article describes a new research study from SRI that may have done just this. I will now be endeavoring to pore through that study. In the meantime, I thought I should share some of the comments made about the study so far:

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.

Hey, not shabby…

…and where have you heard this before (Hint: Me!)

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.

Again, surprise, surprise, surprise! (deference to Gomer Pyle)

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.

~jeb