Articles - on Learning

• Elliott Masie - History and Future of e-Learning
• Julie Clow: glearning
• Britain is Not On Its Knees - Providing It Keeps Training!
  
  This was one of the key messages which attendees took away from the seminar "Business Solutions for a Recession" held in Peterborough at the end of April 2009.
• Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning
  
  A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education). Our thanks to: 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.
• 12 eLearning predictions for 2009
  
  Last year Tony Karrer laid out in January his Ten Predictions for eLearning 2008. In this post, written in December 2008, he looked at how well he did in those predictions, and his results were pretty good, not perfect. So, here are 12 predictions for 2009.
• The state of e-learning, 2008
  
  A personal retrospective of the worldwide state of e-learning at the end of 2008 by Tony Bates. He did this originally for the European Eqibelt project, based in Croatia, but thought he would share it with everyonel.