Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

If you follow any Education blogs other than this one, you'll have heard of the report recently released by the US Department of Education, on the evidence around online learning (I assume, in this blog, that you don't spend spend all day reading eLearning blogs and thus may have missed it).

It is a thorough report, and well worth a review if you are interested in the field. The take home points, to me, from the executive summary are:

"On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

"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."

So, blended learning is better, but it might be because better lecturers who tend to do it, and making good blended learning requires more effort and thought to go into the course development than simply turning up in Boole 4 and talking for an hour a week.

Regardless of whether blended learning is better because of the medium, or the message, that finding is good enough for me. Blended learning will lift your game. Terms starts in three months, you have enough time. Give me a call if you need a hand.

You can view the full text of the report here:

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf