by Rob Jenkins

The debate over online learning is one of those odd conflicts in which one side simply declares that there is no debate and accuses opponents of being hopelessly out of touch and anti-progress. Meanwhile, the other side asserts that we don’t yet have enough data to reach some of the conclusions we’re reaching and warns that decisions based on those conclusions could have serious unintended consequences.

Those who hold that online learning is an unmitigated Good Thing love to point to a 2009 study by the Department of Education which concluded that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” For them, that report represents game, set, and match. Debate over.

However, in arriving at that certainty, they’re ignoring obvious deficiencies in the study itself. They’re also overlooking other, perhaps more relevant research such as the study conducted recently by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University, which found that “community-college students enrolled in online courses fail and drop out more often than those whose coursework is classroom-based.”

The CCRC study, according to a July 2011 story in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “followed the enrollment history of 51,000 community-college students in Washington State between 2004 and 2009 [and] found an eight percentage-point gap in completion rates between traditional and online courses.” It comes on the heels of a study of Virginia community college students, also conducted by the CCRC, which showed similar results.

So why the disconnect? How can online students “perform better” when completion rates in online courses lag so far behind? Perhaps, as yet another new study by the CCRC suggests, the problem is that we’re comparing apples and oranges.

In their paper entitled “Effectiveness of Fully Online Courses for College Students: Response to a Department of Education Meta-Analysis,” the CCRC’s Shanna Smith Jaggers and Thomas Bailey point out that the DOE study was actually a “meta-analysis,” or a review of 99 studies of online learning conducted during the past decade. Yet only 28 of those studies focused on fully online college classes, while only seven dealt with semester-long courses (as opposed to a “short educational intervention on a discrete and specific topic . . . such as how to use an Internet search engine”). All seven were conducted at mid-size or large universities, five of them rated as “selective” or “highly selective” by U.S. News and World Report. (Note that none of the studies selected for the meta-analysis took place at a community college.) All chose classes that were smaller than the average online class, and most chose courses that were technology-related. And perhaps the most telling point: in six of the seven studies, withdrawal rates were not even mentioned.

That explains the disconnect right there. What proponents of a more cautious and measured approach to online education have long argued is that success rates in semester-long online courses are significantly lower than in comparable face to face sections. Both the Washington State and the Virginia studies bear this out. Meanwhile, those who constantly push for more and more online courses, with more and more students enrolled, keep throwing the DOE meta-analysis in our faces, as if to say, “See? We told you online is just as good, if not better.”

I for one don’t doubt that students who complete an online course do just as well or better than their face-to-face counterparts. The degree of intellectual independence and self-discipline required to complete an online course is considerable, so it just makes sense that those students would perform well. The problem is that not enough students complete those courses, especially at community colleges. Apparently many lack the intellectual independence and self-discipline, not to mention the reading ability and technological know-how.

Basically, what Jaggers and Bailey demonstrate is that the DOE study tells us nothing about the effectiveness of online courses for students in full-semester courses at community colleges and other less-selective institutions. Yet those are the very institutions that are today working feverishly to increase online course offerings and enrollments—without much thought for the potential consequences.