The U.S. Department of Education released the findings of a meta-analysis conducted by its Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development on Friday that confirm what online educators have known for years: “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” 

Online education has gained tremendous momentum in the last several years.  A November 2008 report titled, “Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008” published by the Sloan Consortium notes that during the fall 2007 semester, some 3.9 million students were taking at least one course online, representing a twelve percent increase over the previous year.  During the same semester, twenty percent of all college students were taking at least one course online.  An Eduventures report from November 2006 predicted this growth; that report found that half of the 2,000 potential students surveyed indicated that they would be interested in completing a degree online.

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Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, and Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson team up on this recently published book.  In Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Christensen and his co-authors apply sound theory, research, and practicality to a subject that no one wants to tackle: reforming K-12 education in America.

Some of the prescient points that the authors make in the book are:  increasing spending on the wrong items (like more computers) won’t necessarily help improve K-12, blaming the problems solely on the teachers’ unions won’t improve K-12, and unless students and teachers are motivated, problems won’t necessarily get solved.

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