Quite possibly the biggest nod that online education has ever gotten, a new study from the U.S. Department of Education has found that good teaching is enhanced by new technologies. The study found all sorts of great things about online education as opposed to face-to-face instruction. I, for one, am excited to hear this great news.

Online Education Wins! Key Findings
The online education study had the following key findings (I’ve taken the liberty of choosing the top three and arranging them in descending order, starting with my personal fave):

• Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction
• Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction
• Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for

This study has the potential to change the way we teach, from K-12 on up through higher education.

Blended Learning Is on Par, But…
Now, the Internet is a tremendous resource (it is, after all, the largest information database in history, organized and linked in a way that actually changed the way we think about knowledge). Any contemporary college student will tell you that much.

Most contemporary college students are also taking courses with an online component, but it’s most often simply based around taking quizzes and participating in discussion boards. The latter is great, as it encourages discussion in a setting in which most everyone is comfortable (whereas face-to-face debate/discussion intimidates many students into quietude). The former–well…

• Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes

Nail in the coffin for videos of lectures, too–which makes sense. If face-to-face teaching is less effective, than videos of it probably wouldn’t score any better.

Of Course, This Isn’t the End
There’s no substitute for a great teacher. That personal touch is responsible for, among other things, my starting off in engineering and finishing with a degree in English. I have friends and mentors who have taught me about life while instructing me.  And, as the study shows:

• Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes

Not to mention…

• Providing guidance for learning for groups of students appears less successful than does using such mechanisms with individual learners

So, teachers, you’re not being outmoded; it’s just time to evolve.