Physics educators may or may not be interested in a recent post
"Online Education as Institutional Myth" [Hake (2008)]. The abstract
reads:
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ABSTRACT: Rebecca Cox, in her perceptive online article "Online
Education as Institutional Myth: Rituals and Realities at Community
Colleges," concludes that "Without empirical evidence about exactly
how and under what specific conditions online processes facilitate
robust learning, the promises of online education are unlikely to be
realized at the community college." The need for empirical evidence
as to what processes facilitate robust learning (whether online or in
the classroom, and whether at the community or university level) was
recently emphasized in "Can Distance and Classroom Learning Be
Increased?" wherein I wrote: "Instead of measuring pre-to-post test
gains so as to definitively gauge student *learning* in a course,
distance and classroom education researchers. . . . .generally
utilize *low-resolution* measures of students learning, such as
student evaluations of teaching, student self-assessments, and
teacher-made tests and course grades."
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