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A major research report commissioned by the US Government Department for Education has produced some interesting results. The research looked at the comparative effectiveness of classroom learning versus e-learning and looked at data from over 12 years to determine which was the more effective media.
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The headline conclusion which has caused quite a stir in the learning community was that e-learning won out as the more effective medium in 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.”
While this might seem a small difference it is important, especially if you are the US Department of Education with influence on millions of learners through Kindergarten, Schools, Colleges & Universities.
So should Training Managers be busy selling off their classrooms to fund investment in e-learning courses?
Well as ever it may not be that simple, firstly there are some complicated issues about the nature of this report and the fact that it is a ‘meta’ study. A meta study essentially collates and re-examines existing data to look for underlying trends and outcomes that are not easily observable in the initial smaller studies and relies on suitable compatible source data – by definition it is not new data and some classroom learning supporters have sized in this as a reason to challenge the implications of this report.
As the report’s authors state there are multiple differences at work when comparing these media, for instance time – usually an online learner can take as long as they wish to study the offered material where a ‘classroom’ learner is generally constrained by the timetable and peer pressure!
It is also not possible to be confident about the type of learning design employed in either the e-learning or classrooms sessions and how good, bad or indifferent. This maybe especially relevant to the classroom sessions were these mainly very traditional ‘Chalk & talk’ or the modem alternative ‘Dead by PowerPoint’ affairs or well-designed, participative sessions.
Perhaps for us the most important observation made by the reports authors was that students achieved the highest performance where on-line learning and classroom learning were combined in someway, out performing on-line only learners by a (statistically) significant margin, who in turn performed (on average) better than classroom only learners.
Having worked in all these circumstances our experience broadly supports these observations, however above all we believe that good instructional design is the key:- A well designed, engaging and participative ‘classroom’ session will deliver better results a poorly thought out and boring piece of e-learning.
So rather than selling off their training rooms perhaps Training Managers should be looking more closely at the quality of the materials being delivered in them and how employing intelligent use of e-learning can improve results.
The full report -U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D.C., 2009.
A full copy of this report can be downloaded from
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf
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