The new research question: Why is online better?

As I ponder the crucial issues that confront attendees to the next Sloan-C conference I am reminded of what I have been discussing with my current group of doctoral students at UAlbany. To me the question is simple: Why is it that college students in online courses are doing better than college students in classroom courses? Now you may be thinking - ok, Peter is just being controversial. We all know that the research on online and distance learning has focused on the negatives (attrition), or the neutrals (no-significant difference). Well, those days are over. More and more the quality research on online learning reveals that online students are not only doing as well as classroom students, they are doing better.

OK – so what is the evidence?

Lets look first at a few of the most recent publications to report this trend. In April 2009 the US Department of Education released a study in which they reported results of a meta-analysis of more than 1000 empirical studies comparing online and face-to-face instruction. The authors went on to select what they considered to be only the best evidence, 99 studies employing experimental or quasi-experimental methods. These “gold standard” articles suggest that online students perform significantly better than their classroom counterparts on outcomes of learning measured in the studies. The question is why? Was it time on task, and if so, how and why? Was it instructional design and if so, what was different? Was it motivation – how, why? These are the research question that will continue to animate the field for some time to come.

Let’s take for our next example the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement. For the first time the NSSE included demographic items that allowed for the comparison of classroom and online students in terms of engagement. On several of the indicators of engagement online students reported significantly better results. On no indicators did classroom students do so. Relative to classroom students the 2008 NSSE found that online students were significantly more likely to report they

• Very often participate in course activities that challenged them intellectually.
• Very often participate in discussions that enhanced their understanding of different cultures.
• Very often discuss topics of importance to their major.

But why - why are online students doing these things? What make this happen? What is the "active ingredient" leading to intellectual challenge, why do they participate in better discussion on important topics?

One final example that provides clues as to why online education is better comes from Bob Bernard, Phil Abrami and colleagues from Concordia University as reported in the fall 2009 Review of Educational Research (another “gold standard”). This team of researchers has already understood that online education is moving ahead and decided to investigate the conditions within this mode of instruction that seems to account for better outcomes. They focused on interaction types and found that student-student, student-teacher, and student-content interactions accounted for significant differences in the quality of learning outcomes in distance education. In other words, when online instruction focuses on increasing or enhancing interaction, outcomes improve. And still the question remains – what kinds of interactions, why, how?

It is my sincere hope that we can begin to address these subtler questions in this year’s conference and come away with even better understanding of why online learning is superior. Looking forward to seeing you there!