Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Koching up a New Test of Online Learning

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Speaking of James V. Koch (see previous post), the former Old Dominion University president-turned-economics professor has posted on his website a research paper he is publishing about the efficacy of online learning. Many studies have found “no significant difference” between students learning online and in bricks-and-mortar environments, Koch says. But the finding of those studies has been called into question, he notes, for a lack of valid control groups.

Koch (pronounced Cook, incidentally, not like the Koch brothers) sought to rectify that deficiency in a study conducted during the spring of 2010. ODU offered a course in Managerial Economics, which has the reputation as a difficult course due to its use of regression analysis. The course transmitted live-televised lectures to 147 students around the U.S., some through streaming video (into homes), some to ODU branch campuses, and some to electronic classrooms in community colleges. Another 29 students took the course the old-fashioned way, in a classroom on the ODU campus. Class discussions were open to both in-class and online students.

When the grades were in, Koch accounted for variables such as students’ age, race, grade point average and gender. On a zero-to-one scale, the study revealed:

Students who took the course at one of the University’s higher education centers (branch campuses) achieved a grade .097 lower than students on campus.  Those who took the course at a community college achieved a grade .217 higher.  Those who took the course via video streaming achieved a grade .220 lower.  All of these estimates hold constant all other independent variable values.

The streaming-video students performed the worst, Koch surmises, because they were learning solo, without the support of the academic structure or fellow students who study together and help each other solve assigned problems. Similarly, students taking the course at branch campuses tended to rush home to their families and also tended to learn solo. Concludes Koch:

The results here should inspire caution among those who make strong statements about the efficacy of distance learning. …  Like Campbell’s Soups, distance learning now comes in so many varieties that it is increasingly difficult to generalize about it.

Bacon’s bottom line:

Fair enough. But I must make two observations. First, ODU’s TeletechNet program might have lacked important elements provided by state-of-the-art online teaching software, such as lecture re-wind capability and student collaborative tools. (I say “might have” because Koch did not say one way or the other, and they are not mentioned in ODU’s online class demo, so I cannot be certain.) Thus, the lower grades might have reflected an outmoded online model.

Also, I find it surprising that Koch did not draw attention to the fact that the students who performed best were based in community colleges — not  the ODU campus. Not only did these students demonstrate greater mastery of the material, the course was delivered to a less expensive, community-college teaching setting, thus addressing the issue of higher-ed affordability. Although Koch did not draw this conclusion, his findings could be interpreted to support the “hybrid” model of learning, involving elements of both online and traditional academic elements.

— JAB

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  1. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    Age, race, grade point average and gender?

    How about employment status?

    Aren’t most of the students taking Managerial Economics via streaming video into the home employed in substantial outside work?

    Aren’t most of the students who take the class in a classroom either not working at all during the school year or not working much?

    It seems to me that the only way to really test this theory would be to have some on-campus students take the course in a classroom while other students (at the same school) would take the course as distance learning (from their dorm rooms).

    Certainly, there must be examples of colleges where some subject is so popular that only some of the students can take it in a classroom. How do the distance learners fare in that environment?

  2. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Koch acknowledges the importance of employment status in his paper, but I don’t think he corrected for it. Perhaps there were methodological difficulties in doing so. As any good academic will concede, he says more work needs to be done.

  3. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I think Jim is on to something with the Community Colleges in Va.

    Might there be an evolving situation where Community Colleges themselves start offering access to online courses at other 4-year colleges?

    And what if Colleges in other states get in the game quicker than UVA and Va Tech, VCU?

    and you end up with Va students in Va Community colleges taking their higher ed courses from MIT or Stanford while UVA and VaTech are sucking air?

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    the other thing to keep in mind is that ultimately there are going to be job losses and economic consequences for productivity gains in education and health care.

    There’s a certain amount of irony to this but looking downstream – it’s pretty clear that people will need more and more education if they are going to compete for global jobs and it’s becoming increasingly more apparent that the traditional approach is becoming ungodly expensive and is essentially driving people into financial bondage in their quest to get an education.

    At some point (perhaps we’re already way past it), online is going to become the poor-mans path to employment opportunity and typical traditional colleges are going to more and more be viewed like Ivy League institutions are now.

    If you are a young guy/gal and you live in NoVa and you need more STEM – the chances are more and more that you’re going to stay in NoVa and spend your days in an online environment upping your skills game rather than living in a frat house in Cville and going tens of thousands of dollars into debt.

    For more and more people, online is going to become a no-brainer.

  5. reed fawell Avatar
    reed fawell

    I doubt the relevance of the Professor’s work.

    There are so many uncontrolled variables embedded in the differences between those students who do long distance learning from those who learn on the traditional campus environment that those differences render average test scores among the different groups meaningless.

    The fact that long distance learning is far cheaper, far easier to access, far less supervised, far easier to quit, and manned by students with far more outside obstacles to time and attention would tend to lower average scores, while at the same time those very same factors would tend to attract many highly talented and motivated high achievers who otherwise would receive no such education at all. This is the real value on long Distance learning. The Professors study is irrelevant to testing the above stated practical effect and benefit of long distance learning in the real world.

    By the way, there is an excellent opinion piece in Today’s WSJ by MIT president on subject of long distance learning. Give it a look.

    1. reed fawell Avatar
      reed fawell

      Actually, too, I suspect that a far higher percentage of long distance learners are not taking the course to get a good grade. Many likely do not need high grades or any grade for career advancement. This too would skew averages.

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