Aug 25, 2009 
A study by the U.S. Department of Education ‘Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online learning Studies’ has found that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction”. It has also found that combining online and face-to-face instructions is even better. That is, online education when combined with traditional classroom is better that pure classroom teaching or a pure online course.
This is a valuable finding for India as well, where online education is growing.
Though the U.S. study is about K-12 (the term used for Kindergarten to 12th class), it is colleges in India which are making an effort to start tech-based distance learning courses. Mint covered one such course from XLRI in a story on industry-university partnerships last week.
I am a little skeptical, though, if online education is making a difference in K-12 education in India though it is becoming more and more popular in private and government schools (where the government allocates a big ICT budget every year). Last year, Mint ran a profile of Educomp Solutions Ltd’s owner Shantanu Prakash whose company sells online lessons to schools. The lessons I witnessed comprised of teachers clicking a mouse and showing seed germination/climate change on a wall-mounted plasma screen. While some students responded enthusiastically, it seemed like our rote-based education system in a new form. That is, old wine in a new bottle. Education experts such as Krishna Kumar favour a learning-by-doing approach; he feels a child will learn more if she is encouraged to germinate a seed in a pot. Reading the lesson in a book or watching it on screen makes little difference.
For the full study, visit below -
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EvaluationofEvidenceBasedPract/174235
MINT, 24 Aug 2009
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