Study: Internet Education More Effective than Face-to-Face

Posted 08/20/2009 at 5:38am | by Paul Lilly

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It's time to take that online degree out of the basement and tack it prominently on your living room or home office wall. Then when the topic inevitably comes up, you can tell the visiting in-laws that not only was your decision to take online classes better than skipping college altogether, but it might even have traditional colleges and universities beat.

Say what? That's the conclusion SRI International reached in a study for the Department of Education. The 93-page report ultimately concludes that "on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instructions."

A lot of research appears to have gone into the study, which examined comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching during a 12 year span (1996-2008). Some of those comparisons zoned in on K-12 education, but the bulk of it focused on colleges and adult continuing-education with a wide range of programs.

"The study's major significant lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing -- it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction," said Barbara Means, the study's lead author.

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