The Effectiveness of Online Learning in Higher Ed

As developments in educational technology continue to advance, the ways in which we deliver and receive knowledge, as well as engage students in online learning in higher education, in both the traditional and online classrooms will further evolve. It is necessary to investigate and understand the progression and advancements in educational technology and the variety of methods used to deliver knowledge to improve the quality of education we provide today and motivate, inspire, and educate the students of the 21st century.

If you search ‘when was online learning introduced,’ you’ll find online educational programs emerged in 1989, when the University of Phoenix began using CompuServe, one of the first consumer online services. We’ve certainly come a long way. Here is a brief history of online classes.

1982

The Western Behavioral Sciences Institute uses computer conferencing to provide a distance education program for business executives.

1983

Ron Gordon, Atari’s former president, launches the Electronic University Network to make online courses available for people with access to personal computers.

1985

Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Florida, creates the first electronic classroom through an accredited online graduate program.

1986

The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) launches the first open computer network — a precursor to the internet — allowing institutions to create and distribute electronic information.

1993

Jones International University opens in Centennial, Colorado, becoming the first fully web-based, accredited university.

1994

CALCampus introduces the first online-only curriculum with real-time instruction and participation — i.e., synchronous learning.

1995

Nineteen U.S. governors found Western Governors University to help Western states maximize educational resources through distance learning.

1998

California Virtual University — a consortium of California colleges offering around 700 online classes — opens.

2002

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launches the OpenCourseWare Project to provide free MIT courses to people worldwide.

2012

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a free online course resource, becomes available through Udacity and enables learners to take classes asynchronously at their own pace.

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic forces nearly every college and university to switch to online learning rather than hold classes in person.

Despite its evolving history, the effectiveness of online learning is still being researched. Still — and partly in thanks to the pandemic — the popularity of online courses has grown rapidly over the last two years. Online learning can take a number of different forms. Often people think of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, where thousands of students watch a video online and fill out questionnaires or take exams based on those lectures.

While the sophistication and effectiveness of online courses and distance education programs continues to increase, there are weaknesses inherent in the use of this medium that can pose potential threats to the success of any online program. If you simply do a quick search and scan for articles on the  ‘effectiveness of online learning’, you’ll find some consistent themes.

Equity and Accessibility to Technology

Before any online program can hope to succeed, it must have students who are able to access the online learning environment. Lack of access, whether it be for economic or logistic reasons, will exclude otherwise eligible students from the course. This is a significant issue in rural and lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. Further, from an administrative point of view, if students cannot afford the technology the institution employs, they are lost as customers.

As far as internet accessibility is concerned, it is not universal, and in some areas of the United States and other countries, internet access poses a significant cost to the user. Some users pay a fixed monthly rate for their Internet connection, while others are charged for the time they spend online. If the participants’ time online is limited by the amount of Internet access they can afford, then instruction and participation in the online program will not be equitable for all students in the course.

Related to internet accessibility, the next issue centers on computer literacy. Both students and online course facilitators must possess a minimum level of computer knowledge in order to function successfully in an online environment. For example, they must be able to use a variety of search engines and be comfortable navigating on the World Wide Web, as well as be familiar with Newsgroups, discussion boards, FTP procedures, and email.

In general, less oversight, structure, and a lack of physical location can lead to a growing sense of isolation and increased distraction for online students. To curb these threats to engagement, most online courses should work to develop a format much more similar to in-person courses. The instructor helps to run virtual online discussions among the students, provides assignments, and follows up with individual students. Sometimes these courses are synchronous (instructors and students all meet at the same time) and sometimes they are asynchronous (non-concurrent). In both cases, the instructor provides opportunities for students to engage thoughtfully with subject matter, and students, in most cases, are required to interact with each other virtually.

What the Research Says

If you do a search for online learning effectiveness research, you’ll find budding research on the topic, including new research on the effectiveness of online learning in the pandemic. Pandemic aside, in a study on the effectiveness of online learning to students, researchers suggest that the physical “brick and mortar” classroom is starting to lose its monopoly as the place of learning.

The Internet has made online learning possible, and many researchers and educators are interested in online learning to enhance and improve student learning outcomes while combating the reduction in resources, particularly in higher education. It is imperative that researchers and educators consider the impact of online learning on students compared to traditional face-to-face format and the factors that influence the effectiveness of online courses.

A number of studies have assessed online versus in-person learning at the college level in recent years. A key concern in this literature is that students typically self-select into online or in-person programs or courses, confounding estimates of student outcomes. That is, differences in the characteristics of students themselves may drive differences in the outcome measures we observe that are unrelated to the mode of instruction. In addition, the content, instructor, assignments, and other course features might differ across online and in-person modes as well, which make comparisons difficult.

The most compelling studies of the effectiveness of online learning for students draw on a random assignment design (i.e., randomized control trial or RCT) to isolate the causal effect of online versus in-person learning. Several studies were able to estimate causal effects of online learning on student performance for final exams or course grades in recent years. Many of these studies found that online instruction resulted in lower student performance relative to in-person instruction; although in one case, students with hybrid instruction performed similarly to their in-person peers. Negative effects of online course-taking were particularly pronounced for males and less-academically prepared students.

The effects of online learning on student performance quantitative research by Kofoed and co-authors adds to this literature looking specifically at online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a novel context: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. When many colleges moved classes completely online or let students choose their own mode of instruction at the start of the pandemic, West Point economics professors arranged to randomly assign students to in-person or online modes of learning.

The same instructors taught one online and one in-person economics class each, and all materials, exams, and assignments were otherwise identical, minimizing biases that otherwise stand in the way of true comparisons. They found that online education lowered a student’s final grade by about 0.2 standard deviations. Their work also confirms the results of previous papers, finding that the negative effect of online learning was driven by students with lower academic ability. A follow-up survey of students’ experiences suggests that online students had trouble concentrating on their coursework and felt less connected to both their peers and instructors relative to their in-person peers.

Cacault et al. (2021) also use an RCT to assess the effects of online lectures in a Swiss university. The authors find that having access to a live-streamed lecture in addition to an in-person option improves the achievement of high-ability students, but lowers the achievement of low-ability students.

Finally, let’s look to this study out of Vanderbilt University, which examines the evidence of the effectiveness of online learning by organizing and summarizing the findings and challenges of online learning into positive, negative, mixed, and null findings. Particular attention is paid to the meta-analyses on the effectiveness of online learning, the heterogeneous outcomes of student learning and the endogenous issue of learning environment choice.

Taken as a whole, findings show robust evidence to suggest online learning is generally at least as effective as the traditional format. Moreover, this body of literature suggests that researchers should move beyond the “no significant difference” phenomenon and consider the next stage of online learning — some say that new wave is blended learning.

What is Blended Learning

Blended learning has its roots in online learning and represents a fundamental shift in instruction that has the potential to optimize online student engagement in higher education in ways that traditional instruction might not. Although colleges and universities have been using technology for some time, until recently they haven’t generally used technology to provide students with a true blend of instruction that gives them some element of control over their learning.

To successfully design an effective blended learning experience, it’s important to incorporate the blended learning tools that support collaborative learning. Collaborative learning requires learners to work together to make connections, uncover new ways of understanding concepts, and achieve a shared goal  (Laal & Laal, 2012; Falcione et al. 2019). In fact, it is showing to be one of the most effective instructional methods for students. Studies show that online collaboration increases students’ academic achievement and self-efficacy. And while it may seem more challenging to facilitate collaboration in online learning, research indicates that student participation in online collaborative learning activities are related to better course outcomes — which explains the rise of blended learning platforms.

While there’s no shortage of technology for blended learning on the market, the best ones foster connection and community as well as provide learners with an active role and responsibility in their learning — working together to build knowledge, to explore ways to innovate, and to seek the conceptual knowledge needed to solve problems.

Types of Blended Learning

There are many types of blended learning. Here, we’ll share just a few.

Station Rotation Blended Learning

Station-Rotation is just one of the models of blended learning that allows students to rotate through stations on a fixed schedule, where at least one of the stations is an online learning station. This model is most common in elementary schools because teachers are already familiar with rotating in centers and stations.

2. Lab Rotation Blended Learning

The Lab Rotation model of blended learning, similar to Station Rotation, works by allowing students to rotate through stations on a fixed schedule in a dedicated computer lab allowing for flexible scheduling arrangements with instructors.

3. Remote Blended Learning

Here, the student’s focus is on completing online coursework while only meeting with the instructor intermittently or as-needed. This approach differs from the Flipped Classroom model in the balance of online to face-to-face instructional time. In a remote blended learning model, students wouldn’t see/work with/learn from a teacher on a daily basis face-to-face but would in a ‘flipped’ setting.

4. Flex Blended Learning

The ‘Flex’ is included in types of blended learning and its model is one in which a course or subject in which online learning is the backbone of student learning, even if it directs students to offline activities at times. Students move on an individually customized, fluid schedule among learning modalities. The teacher of record is onsite, and students learn mostly on the brick-and-mortar campus, except for any assignments. The instructor provides face-to-face support on a flexible and adaptive as-needed basis through activities such as small-group instruction, group projects, and individual tutoring.

5. Individual Rotation Blended Learning

The Individual Rotation model allows students to rotate through stations, but on individual schedules set by a teacher or software algorithm. Unlike other rotation models, with this blended learning approach, students do not necessarily rotate to every station; they rotate only to the activities scheduled on their playlists.

6. Project-Based Blended Learning

One of the other blended learning models we’ll cover is the blended project-based learning where students use both online learning—either in the form of courses or self-directed access—and face-to-face instruction and collaboration to design, iterate, and publish project-based learning assignments, products, and related artifacts. This is a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning.

There are other types of blended learning in higher education which can be explored using these resources: the Christensen Institute and blendedlearning.org.

Effectiveness of Blended Learning

The effectiveness of blended learning and the benefits of blended learning are wide ranging. In general, participants in blended learning courses experience better efficiency, accessibility, and engagement.

Efficiency: Years ago, an instructor may have spent days explaining a complex math concept. It was difficult to assess student understanding and engagement. Today, blended learning can help instructors more quickly and accurately assess the student’s knowledge and teach concepts more efficiently. It is said that blended learning improves the efficacy and efficiency of the entire learning process for both instructors and students.

Accessibility: With traditional teaching methods, educational materials were only available during classroom hours. Students may have been able to take their textbooks home with them, but they didn’t have a way to actually interact with or engage the material. With new learning apps and other technological advances, they have more flexibility to access and engage with course material from home. This accessibility along with the opportunity to self-pace the learning could translate into more successful outcomes.

Student engagement in blended learning: Blended learning also presents more opportunities for students to connect with their peers and instructors. They can connect via chat, feedback, or on discussion boards. Courses with an online component is an effective means for instructors and students to become more engaged with one another outside of the classroom. In the end, the benefits of blended learning are powerful. Instructors can keep a better pulse on student progress and engagement, while students can ask more questions, collaborate more frequently with classmates, and gain deeper knowledge.

In addition to instructional efficiency, the blended learning benefits for teachers include greater insight into how their learners are doing. With blended learning tools, instructors have real-time insights to see whether students are engaging with the content and keeping on track with learning goals. They can see what’s working, so they can offer a more effective learning experience. The same goes for the organization’s learning departments. With blended learning, they have real opportunities to deliver faster outcomes at lower costs, as well as reach a much wider audience through the use of blended learning platforms.

Using these online tools increases the quality and quantity of student-to-student, student-to-content, and student-to-instructor interactions. For example, Harmonize’s collaborative online learning tools are designed to create a better online learning experience for students. They include:

• Q&A boards for students to interact
• Digital annotations allow instructors to leave feedback on images and videos
• Discussion boards where students can come together to chat about course-related topics
• Multimedia capabilities that allow students to embed media and upload files to discussion boards
• Chat functionality for real-time interactions
• Polls for assessing student learning and gathering feedback

The bottom line is that having access to the right tools to power effective online learning is paramount. Making sure your technology and student engagement activities are inclusive of different learners’ styles, fosters social connection and community, and is designed to help instructors track student participation could spell the difference between student success or attrition.

Harmonize is a suite of digital discussion and collaboration tools that integrate seamlessly with your LMS to facilitate a more engaging online and blended learning experience. It’s everything an instructor needs to increase student engagement online and promote inclusive learning, while saving time and eliminating manual tasks.