Meta-Analysis

The Effects of Distance Education on K-12 Student Outcomes and Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning are meta-analysis comparing online learning and traditional face-to-face (f2f) students. The reports show that online learning is at least as good as f2f learning. In some cases, online is more effective. At the same time, I am wary of this type of analysis. I find it useful as an approximation, but it lacks sufficient detail to provide an irrefutable conclusion. Many of the studies involved students from a wide range of grade levels, including K-12, undergrads, and post-grads. The studies also included people who were not students at all - professionals in the workforce. The studies needed the age ranges for a reasonable sample size. As the same time, I don't find much logical in mixing such a broad range of learners. Some of the studies were older and prior to the advent of web2.0 tools. I could argu that older studies are an even more positive for online learning because the tools were cruder and teachers had less knowledge of what to do. There is concern that there may be survivor bias because students that completed the online course were motivated and performed well.

Two algebra studies were also positive for online education and were more thorough than the meta-analysis mentioned above. Algebra Achievement in Virtual and Traditional Schools and Effectiveness of Online Algebra Learning found that, "Online students consistently outperformed traditional students across the AAU subscales". These studies were recent (2007) used 85 traditional and 25 online students in three schools. I have no doubt that online will continue to evolve faster than traditional curriculum and pedagogy. Online courses have not yet begun to leverage social networking tools. In addition, we don't have enough data to It is likely that not all subject and grade levels will be appropriate for online instruction. Hopefully, there will be a new round of research that identifies which subjects are the best candidates for online courses. There also needs to be more research on what makes an online course successful.