Modern online learning includes offerings that run the gamut from conventional didactic lectures or textbook-like information delivered over the Web to Internet-based collaborative role-playing in social simulations and highly interactive multiplayer strategy games. Examples include primary-grade students working on beginning reading skills over the Internet, middle school students collaborating with practicing scientists in the design and conduct of research, and teenagers who dropped out of high school taking courses online to attain the credits needed for graduation. The teachers of K–12 students may also participate in online education, logging in to online communities and reference centers and earning inservice professional development credit online.
One of the most basic characteristics for classifying online activities is its objective - whether the activity serves as a replacement for face-to-face instruction (e.g., a virtual course) or as an enhancement of the face-to-face learning experience (i.e., online learning activities that are part of a course given face-to-face). This distinction is important because the two types of applications have different objectives. A replacement application that is equivalent to conventional instruction in terms of learning outcomes is considered a success if it provides learning online without sacrificing student achievement. If student outcomes are the same whether a course is taken online or face-to-face, then online instruction can be used cost-effectively in settings where too few students are situated in a particular geographic locale to warrant an on-site instructor (e.g., rural students, students in specialized courses). In contrast, online enhancement activities that produce learning outcomes that are only equivalent to (not better than) those resulting from face-to-face instruction alone would be considered a waste of time and money because the addition does not improve student outcomes.
A second important dimension is the type of learning experience, which depends on who (or what) determines the way learners acquire knowledge. Learning experiences can be classified in terms of the amount of control that the student has over the content and nature of the learning activity. In traditional didactic or expository learning experiences, content is transmitted to the student by a lecture, written material, or other mechanisms. Such conventional instruction is often contrasted with active learning in which the student has control of what and how he or she learns. Another category of learning experiences stresses collaborative or interactive learning activity in which the nature of the learning content is emergent as learners interact with one another and with a teacher or other knowledge sources. Technologies can support any of these three types of learning experience:
- Expository instruction
- Digital devices transmit knowledge. Technology delivers the content.
- Active learning
- The learner builds knowledge through inquiry-based manipulation of digital artifacts such as online drills, simulations, games, or microworlds. Students control digital artifacts to explore information or address problems.
- Interactive learning
- The learner builds knowledge through inquiry-based collaborative interaction with other learners; teachers become co-learners and act as facilitators. Technology mediates human interaction either synchronously or asynchronously; learning emerges through interactions with other students and the technology.
The learner-control category of interactive learning experiences is related to the so-called “fifth generation” of distance learning, which stresses a flexible combination of independent and group learning activities. Researchers are now using terms such as “distributed learning” (Dede 2006) or “learning communities” to refer to orchestrated mixtures of face-to-face and virtual interactions among a cohort of learners led by one or more instructors, facilitators or coaches over an extended period of time (from weeks to years).
Finally, a third characteristic commonly used to categorize online learning activities is the extent to which the activity is synchronous, with instruction occurring in real time whether in a physical or a virtual place, or asynchronous, with a time lag between the presentation of instructional stimuli and student responses.
Many other features also apply to online learning, including the type of setting (classroom, home, informal), the nature of the content (both the subject area and the type of learning such as fact, concept, procedure or strategy), and the technology involved (e.g., audio/video streaming, Internet telephony, podcasting, chat, simulations, videoconferencing, shared graphical whiteboard, screen sharing).
The dimensions in the framework in the above table were derived from prior meta-analyses in distance learning. Bernard et al. (2004) found advantages for asynchronous over synchronous distance education. In examining a different set of studies, Zhao et al. (2005) found that studies of distance-learning applications that combined synchronous and asynchronous communication tended to report more positive effects than did studies of distance learning applications with just one of these interaction types. Zhao et al. also found (a) advantages for blended learning (called “Face-to-Face Enhancement” in the above table) over purely online learning experiences and (b) advantages for courses with more instructor involvement compared with more “canned” applications that provide expository learning experiences. Thus, those three dimensions capture some of the most important kinds of variation in distance learning and together provide a manageable framework for differentiating among the broad array of online activities in practice today.
The above is excerpted from: 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.
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