Fueled by the Internet and the promise of greatly increased accessibility, distance learning is poised to become a major force in U.S. post-secondary education. What isn't so clear, and remains a key point of contention for those who think the new bells and whistles lack real benefits, is how well Web-based learning measures up to traditional teaching methods.
Hard data is scarce or nonexistent.
Like many aspects of education, determining the true efficacy of distance learning is a complex and elusive target. David Wallace, MIT David Wallace, a Web-savvy industrial design professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was concerned about this lack of data, so he decided to find his own answers by running several controlled studies. What he discovered is at once encouraging and cautionary for the future of technology-based education. Wallace's first step, though, was a step back. Students could thereby choose both what they saw and the order in which they saw it guiding themselves through the material however they find most comfortable.