“LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS means that learners who complete an online program receive educations that represent the distinctive quality of the institution. The goal is that online learning is at least equivalent to learning through the institution’s other delivery modes, in particular through its traditional face-to-face, classroom-based instruction. Interaction is key .Thus learning effectiveness must be the first measure by which online education is judged. If we can’t learn as well online as we can in traditional classrooms, then online education itself is suspect, and other clearly critical issues, such as access, student and faculty satisfaction, and (dare we say it) cost effectiveness are largely irrelevant. Indeed, when online learning was first conceived and implemented, a majority of educators believed that it could never be as good as face-to-face learning. Many still do. In fact, however, we now have good and ample evidence that students generally learn as much online as they do in traditional classroom environments.
Several researchers have used faculty perceptions of student learning as a measure of learning effectiveness in online courses, compared the performance of students enrolled in an online graduate course with that of students taking the same course taught in a traditional classroom. Using a blind review process to judge the quality of major course projects, they found no significant differences between the two courses. The researchers further found that the distributions of course grades in the two courses were statistically equivalent.
According to Richard Clark [21] for the Review of Educational Research in which he argued that media do not make a difference in learning but rather that instruction does. Clark was particularly concerned with several studies of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) that compared it with traditional instruction and found that students at a variety of levels learned more and faster from CAI [22]. Clark argued that these and other findings of significant differences between technology-based and traditional interventions resulted from more rigorously designed instruction, not from media effects. Media, he maintained, were like trucks, they were delivery vehicles and no more. What mattered, according to Clark, was the quality of instruction, not how it was delivered. The CAI studied, for example, was rigorously designed according to principles of instructional design, while the traditional instruction with which it was compared was not. Thus, Clark argued that media effects were a chimera because if instruction were held constant there would be no significant learning differences between technology-based and traditional education.
Researchers concerned with computer-based education have identified three kinds of interactivity that affect learning: interaction with content, interaction with instructors, and interaction among peers [33]. Interaction with content refers both to learners’ interactions with the course materials and to their interaction with the concepts and ideas they present. Interaction with instructors includes the myriad ways in which instructors teach, guide, correct, and support their students. Interaction among peers refers to interactions among learners which also can take many forms — debate, collaboration, discussion, peer review, as well as informal and incidental learning among classmates. Each of these modes of interaction support learning and each can be uniquely enacted in online learning environments.
By: Mrs. Gina A. Torres | Teacher III | Sto. Niño Biaan Elementary School | Mariveles, Bataan
