Youth and Technology

This Department of Education meta-analysis looks at reports on the efficacy of online learning from the years 1996-2008.  It found that:

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, 50 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction…….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).

Much has changed over the past 3 years with technology (e.g. invention of the iPad) and content availability (e.g. Khan Academy), so it would be interesting to see how this report might be different today.

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf