BY DAVID MARKUS, edutopia
When email and online, real-time chat for consumers came along in the 1970s, the brave new path to the virtual classroom was plain to see. Today, 45 of 50 states plus the District of Columbia have a state virtual school or online learning initiative, full-time online schools, or both. Fifty-seven percent of public secondary schools now provide access to online learning for students. And the impact on the learning process — while still a focus of research for K-12 students — is increasingly being seen as positive. A U.S. Department of Education analysis of more than 40 studies, including five focused on K-12 pupils, found that “students who took all or part of their classes online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.” Another study, by the National Survey of Student Engagement, reported that the online-learning experience yielded deeper use of “higher-order thinking, integrative learning, and reflective learning.”
http://www.edutopia.org/stw-online-learning-new-breakthroughs
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