Distance Education vs. Classroom Education:

Distance Education vs. Classroom Education: A Literature Review

Is distance education as good as classroom education? Since distance education's beginnings, students and teachers alike have been attempting to answer this question. For this reason, considerable scholarship on the subject has been completed. This scholarship analyzes the quality of distance education, in addition to comparing this type of education with traditional, classroom education. The following literature review will address the current literary findings, as well as suggest improvements and future methods of research.

As recently as 2004, Abrami et al. addressed the issue, completing a meta-analysis comparing the quality of distance and classroom education. This meta-analysis is crucial, however, because it collects relevant data across studies and compares it, providing a more accurate picture of differences in quality between distance and classroom education. In this case, Abrami et al. compared all of the distance education literature between 1985 and 2002. The group's findings, however, were mixed. They found that in some cases, distance education performed more poorly than classroom education, while others showed distance education as performing better than classroom education. The only correlation they determined was between synchronous and asynchronous forms of distance education, as they found that synchronous education tended to work better with classroom education and distance education tended to prefer asynchronous education (Abrami et al. 2004, p. 379). While these results may have shed some light on the subject of distance education and classroom education, they are in need of an update. Because the analysis considered results both before and after new technologies and the Internet were implemented into distance education, their results may not be sound.

Stella and Gnanam's 2004 article, "Quality assurance in distance education: The challenges addressed," responds to this issue of technology in distance education. The scholars acknowledge that distance education provides material through "satellites, computers, correspondence, and other technological means across national boundaries." (Stella and Gnanam 2004, p. 143). Because distance education is remarkably different than classroom education, Stella and Granam (2004) suggest that the two require remarkably different means of "quality assurance." Because this study acknowledges both the unique technology involved in distance education, along with the difference between distance education and traditional education, it has furthered the literary knowledge about the topic, suggesting that what is quality for classroom education may not be quality for distance education.

Vidovich (2002) also weighs in on determining the quality of distance education. Her study is more specific than Stella and Gnanam's, and focuses on higher education in Australia, though the study compares this particular method of quality assurance with others. Vidovich (2002) argues that in this quality assurance program, "academics have not lessened, but have changed form" (p.391). This, Vindovich (2002) both acknowledges the difference between traditional and distance education and validates this type of education as having the same academics as traditional education.

Although studying distance education in terms of quality and quality comparison with classroom education is valid, another approach to determining whether distance education is of the same quality as classroom education is up to the students. Programs and teachers can influence school quality, but students' efforts can largely impact education quality as well. This is what researchers Lawless and Richardson (2002) found when they determined that "approaches to studying in distance education are strongly associated with students' perception of the academic quality of their courses" (p. 257). In other words, the researchers found that the quality of distance education was not measured by some arbitrary method, but by the students' own effort. Furthermore, Richardon and Woodley (2001) examined deaf students' studying in distance learning, and found that the students were able to obtain higher scores in some areas associated with learning than their hearing counterparts. Thus, not only does distance education rely on the students for quality assurance, but also caters to different kinds of students in the same way, or a better way, than traditional classroom education.