New Scientist Planet Science: The Net benefits of learning from home

The Net benefits of learning from home

By David Brake

Students who do all of their learning through the Internet can do better than those who are taught conventionally, a Californian study has found.
Last autumn, Jerald Schutte of California State University in Northridge divided a class of 33 sociology students taking his course in statistics into two groups. The "traditional" group was taught in a classroom every Saturday morning for 14 weeks. The "online" group came together only for examinations at the start and end of the course. None of the students in either group knew they were part of an experiment.
The online group used electronic mail to collaborate in groups of three, assigned at random. They also took part in weekly discussions held on the World Wide Web, and a weekly "live" online chat session moderated by Schutte.
At the end of the course, the online students scored 20 per cent higher in their exam. A subsequent questionnaire indicated that they had spent more time on their coursework, and that they understood the material better.
Schutte attributes the virtual students' success to their eagerness to discuss their work online. The traditional students tended to work in isolation. "I would say the collaboration resulted from the panic of having no face-to-face interaction with a professor," Schutte says. He does not think that the online students became more enthusiastic simply because of the novelty of working with the Internet: "Most of that gave way to frustration due to the technology problems."
One small experiment does not prove that online education is inherently superior to the traditional variety. Larger studies, examining teaching in a wide range of subjects, are now needed.
Previous studies into online education have mostly focused on its use in support of conventional teaching rather than as a substitute. "We believe you can't dispense with the intervention of a teacher, at least in schools," says Jeff Morgan, director of communications technologies at the UK National Council for Educational Technology, "though the results are perfectly plausible for university-age students."
From New Scientist, 1 February 1997