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Fields, Xan - meta-analysis

Page history last edited by jsfields@crimson.ua.edu 13 years, 1 month ago

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies

Each of you please answer the following questions on the class wiki as indicated, although I want you to “talk/collaborate” with one another in the class as you answer these questions.

1. What were the measures used in this study?

This study looked at a number of different kinds of measures, actually. There were measures to determine which studies would be included in the meta-analysis, and also the measures of the meta-analysis itself. In regards to the meta-analysis measures, the researchers looked at 50 different effects for objective measures (test scores) of student learning (p. xii) from 45 studies (out of an original 99 studies). These effects were collected from 3 Categories: "studies comparing an online learning condition with a face-to-face contorl condition, studies comparing a blended condition with a face-to-face control condition with the online learning components, and studies testing th elearning effects of vafriations in online learning practices such as onlin learnign with and without interactive video" (p.9). That's a whole lot of measuring!!

2. How did the researchers define “better”?

The term "better" was mostly implied in the study as statistically significant positive effect sizes and "stronger student learning outcomes" (p.18, 28, among other pages).

3. How did the researchers define “performance"?

Although "peformance" was mainly implied in the report, the reader can determine that different studies used different test measures to determine student performance. Some looked at multiple choice tests, ability to perform a procedure, and declaritive knowledge (p. 35). The study also looked at instructional practices in some cases (p. 51) which would describe the "performance" designed into the delivery method. These performance measures are important to this meta-analysis because it was found that students produced "better outcomes [in online learning conditions] than face-to-face learning alone, regardless of whether these instruction practices were used" (p. 51).