A new era for online education?

We’ve done a good bit of online education here at M2O. We’ve done things for new BlackBerries, new digital camera users, and a host of other tools. That said we also like to say “eLearing sucks!” because the standard practice for eLearing really does suck.

However if this Mashable article is right there might be hope:

While the study certainly provides a vote of confidence for online learning, it’s important to note that it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that online learning is more effective as a medium than classroom learning. “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,” writes the authors of the report (emphasis theirs). “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 other words: all things are not equal. Students spending three hours per day in an online environment under the guidance of a great professor are likely, and not surprisingly, going to be better prepared than those spending an hour per week in a classroom with a mediocre one. And because the study’s results were correlational and not causal, it is impossible to say for certain whether it was actually the online learning environment that caused better tested performance. We can conclude that those in online learning environments tested better, but not necessarily why.

link: What is the Future of Teaching?

I agree with the spirit of the Mashable article. I do a lot of “learning” online. In fact I do most of my learning online. I read, I write, I discuss … all online. Which is why Mashable is right.

There isn’t easy thing wrong with learning online, the problem is when the programs developed are drier then burnt toast.

Would you/do you like to learn online?

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