Weber State University, which had the most public college students taking online courses in the state as of 2010 with over 7,150 enrolled, now offers two-hour professional development courses twice a month to help professors develop better online courses, said Gail Niklason, associate of continuing education at the university. They learn about incorporating video and other interactive tools. She said 90 full-time faculty members out of about 480 have been through the training over the last five years.

Many organizations warn students to research their classes before taking them, especially if the university is online only. Several lawsuits have been filed over the last several months against for-profit colleges, which often have a big online base, over best practices and validity.

To read this article in its entirety from the Deseret News, click here.

As Anya Kamenetz suggests in “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education,” these problems, and the fact that students and teachers are increasingly venturingbeyond campus walls to gather and share information, spell trouble for the future of the conventional university. In her book, Kamenetz, the author of “Generation Debt” and a staff writer for Fast Company magazine, argues that a decentralized college experience — in which the least effective parts of college       life are replaced by technology, social media and self-directed learning — can limit dropout rates and reverse the devastating cost spiral.

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The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took “blended” courses — those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction — appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.

The Education Department examined all kinds of instruction, and found that the number of valid analyses of elementary and secondary education was too small to have much confidence in the results. But the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.

A meta-analysis is one that takes all of the existing studies and looks at them for patterns and conclusions that can be drawn from the accumulation of evidence.

On the topic of online learning, there is a steady stream of studies, but many of them focus on limited issues or lack control groups. The Education Department report said that it had identified more than 1,000 empirical studies of online learning that were published from 1996 through July 2008. For its conclusions, however, the Education Department considered only a small number (51) of independent studies that met strict criteria. They had to contrast an online teaching experience to a face-to-face situation, measure student learning outcomes, use a “rigorous research design,” and provide adequate information to calculate the differences.

The department noted that this new meta-analysis differs from previous such studies, which generally found that online education and face-to-face instruction were similarly effective on issues of learning, but didn’t give an edge to online learning that may now exist.

While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes — frequently encouraged for online education — “does not appear to enhance learning,” the report says.

Using technology to give students “control of their interactions” has a positive effect on student learning, however. “Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals,” the report says.

Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. “Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning,” the report says.

In noting caveats about the findings, the study returns to the issue of time.

“Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium,” the report says. “In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.”

In a statement, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged educators to consider the report’s findings. “This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide,” he said.

John R. Bourne, executive director of the Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges and other organizations that work on online education issues, said he was not surprised by the findings, but thought it was quite important that the Education Department was the source. “I think this is incredibly significant,” he said. “Those of us in the business have thought these things for some time, but we have had enormous trouble convincing some folks” about the quality of online education. “I think this will give more credibility to the things that have been said.”

Diana G. Oblinger, president of Educause, also was pleased with the findings. “Online education provides additional opportunities,” she said. “It gives people greater opportunity for flexibility, for experiential learning, for illustrating things in multiple ways such as visualization.” What the study demonstrates, she said, is that colleges need to think broadly about using online education, and not be “artificially limited” to face-to-face instruction.

Lawrence N. Gold, director of higher education at the American Federation of Teachers, said via e-mail that it was important to pay attention to the report’s caveats and not view it as evidence for shifting everything possible online.

“This report correctly recognizes that online learning and blended learning are growing components of higher education and, employed properly, can play a significant role in promoting student learning. Further public investment in experimentation and technology is certainly warranted,” he said.

But noting the caveats in the report about factors other than medium of instruction, he said that “we should not take the report as saying it is simply better to move to online learning. These results demonstrate why more research is needed — broadly based research that moves well beyond case studies conducted by distance education practitioners, research focused on student retention in online environments and especially research that looks behind the instructional medium to isolate the characteristics of instruction that produce positive results. Successful education has always been about engaging students whether it is in an online environment, face to face or in a blended setting. And fundamental to that is having faculty who are fully supported and engaged in that process as well.”

Link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/27/online

The growth rate eclipsed last year’s 12-percent increase and dwarfed the 1.2 percent growth rate of the overall higher-education student population. The report, which has become a widely cited benchmark of distance learning, found a total of more than 4.6-million online students overall. That’s up from about 3.9 million the previous year.

Despite this surge, the data suggest that not enough institutions have taken online education into account as they conduct planning around issues like how to deal with budget cuts and space shortages, says A. Frank Mayadas, a special adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

“They have to wake up and begin to think about this as a strategic item,” Mr. Mayadas says.

The report found that public institutions are by far the most likely to believe that online education is key to their long-term strategy. That reflects the striking demand for online couses at institutions like the University of Central Florida, where more than half of the 53,500 students take at least one online course each year.

The university’s online efforts stem from its mission of providing access and its budget realities. All new construction money is “basically frozen at the state level,” says Tom Cavanagh, assistant vice president for distributed learning.

“For us to grow, it’s going to be online until that money is freed up again,” he says.

The Sloan report is based on data collected from more than 2,500 colleges and universities by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board. Among the study’s other key findings:

* Bad economic times, which traditionally drive more people back to school, are having a particularly strong impact on demand for online courses. Seventy-three percent of institutions report increased demand for existing online courses, compared with 54 percent for face-to-face. Sixty-six percent report increased demand for new online courses. And students are clamoring for distance education at colleges that don’t offer it; 45 percent of institutions in that category report growing demand for new online courses and programs.

* Fewer than one-third of chief academic officers think that their faculty members accept the “value and legitimacy” of online education, a perception that hasn’t change much in the past six years. (Another survey, released in 2009, also reflected broad faculty suspicion about the quality of online courses.)

* More than two-thirds of institutions have a contingency plan to deal with a disruption from the H1N1 flu, and substituting online for face-to-face classes is an element in 67 percent of those plans.

* The overwhelming majority of the 4.6-million online students — over 82 percent — are undergraduates.