Difficulty level (register)

K1 86.6
ENG1010 English for Effective Communication K2 2.9

How Effective Is Online Learning? K1+K2 89.5

AWL 6.1
What the Research Does and Doesn't Tell Us
Off-list 4.37
Lexical Density 0.58
Susanna Loeb
Readability 13.9
MAR 20, 2020

The times have dictated school closings and the rapid expansion of online
education. Can online lessons replace in-school time? This introductory paragraph implies
that this article will be about the
Clearly online time cannot provide many of the informal social interactions ____________ of online learning,
students have at school, but how will online courses do in terms of moving and the arguments will be based on
5 student learning forward? Research to date gives us some clues and also evidence from ____________.
points us to what we could be doing to support students who are most
likely to struggle in the online setting.
Guess the meaning?
___________________________
The use of virtual courses among K-12 students has grown rapidly in
recent years. Florida, for example, requires all high school students to take Research online and find out the
10 at least one online course. Online learning can take a number of different age group of these students.
forms. Often people think of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, ___________________________
where thousands of students watch a video online and fill out
questionnaires or take exams based on those lectures. Summary:
1. P__________ of online learning
Most online courses, however, particularly those serving K-12 students, 2. Different f__________ of
15 have a format much more similar to in-person courses. The teacher helps to online courses.
run virtual discussion among the students, assigns homework, and follows
up with individual students. Sometimes these courses are synchronous Find the meaning of the following:

(teachers and students all meet at the same time) and sometimes they are Synonym: ___________________

asynchronous (non-concurrent). In both cases, the teacher is supposed to Synchronize: ________________

20 provide opportunities for students to engage thoughtfully with subject

matter, and students, in most cases, are required to interact with each other *Guess the meaning of “Syn-“:

virtually. ___________________________

Online courses provide opportunities for students. Students in a school that Summary:
doesn’t offer statistics classes may be able to learn statistics with virtual The b__________ of online
25 lessons. If students fail algebra, they may be able to catch up during learning
evenings or summer using online classes, and not disrupt their math
What does this mean?
trajectory at school. So, almost certainly, online classes sometimes benefit
___________________________
students.

In comparisons of online and in-person classes, however, online classes

 ENG1010 English for Effective Communication
30 aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students. Only a little
research has assessed the effects of online lessons for elementary and high
school students, and even less has used the “gold standard” method of
comparing the results for students assigned randomly to online or in-person
courses. Jessica Heppen and colleagues at the American Institutes for Purpose for these courses?
35 Research and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research ___________________________
randomly assigned students who had failed second semester Algebra I to ___________________________
either face-to-face or online credit remedial courses over the summer.
Summary:
Students’ credit-recovery success rates and algebra test scores were lower
Pointing out the effectiveness of
in the online setting. Students assigned to the online option also rated their
online classes is __________ than
40 class as more difficult than did their peers assigned to the face-to-face
in-person classes with evidence
option.
from __________.

Most of the research on online courses for K-12 students has used large-
What are the “two settings”?
scale administrative data, looking at otherwise similar students in the two
___________________________
settings. One of these studies, by June Ahn of New York University and
___________________________
45 Andrew McEachin of the RAND Corp., examined Ohio charter schools; I
did another with colleagues looking at Florida public school coursework.
Both studies found evidence that online course-taking was less effective.

It is not surprising that in-person courses are, on average, more effective.

Being in person with teachers and other students creates social pressures
Summary:
50 and benefits that can help motivate students to engage. Some students do as
__________ why in-person courses
well in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better,
are more effective
but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is
particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.
What are “these differences”?
Students who struggle in in-person classes are likely to struggle even more ___________________________
55 online. While the research on virtual schools in K-12 education doesn’t ___________________________
address these differences directly, a study of college students that I worked
on with Stanford colleagues found very little difference in learning for Summary:
high-performing students in the online and in-person settings. On the other Weaker students __________
hand, lower performing students performed meaningfully worse in online more in online learning environment
60 courses than in in-person courses.

But just because students who struggle in in-person classes are even more
likely to struggle online doesn’t mean that’s inevitable. Online teachers
will need to consider the needs of less-motivated students and work to Guess the meaning?
engage them. Online courses might be made to work for these students on ___________________________
65 average, even if they have not in the past.
 ENG1010 English for Effective Communication Guess the meaning?
Just like in brick-and-mortar classrooms, online courses need a strong ___________________________
curriculum and strong pedagogical practices. Teachers need to understand
Summary:
what students know and what they don’t know, as well as how to help them
Both formats of classroom rely on
learn new material. What is different in the online setting is that students
the c __________ and the
70 may have more distractions and less oversight when they are alone, which
execution of the t __________
can reduce their motivation. The teacher will need to set norms for
_________.
engagement—such as requiring students to regularly ask questions and What does this mean?
respond to their peers—that are different than the norms in the in-person ___________________________
setting.

75 Online courses are generally not as effective as in-person classes, but they
are certainly better than no classes. A substantial research base developed
by Karl Alexander at Johns Hopkins University and many others shows
that students, especially students with fewer resources at home, learn less
when they are not in school. Right now, virtual courses are allowing
80 students to access lessons and exercises and interact with teachers in ways
Is this positive or negative?
that would have been impossible if an epidemic had closed schools even a
positive / negative
decade or two earlier. So we may be skeptical of online learning, but it is
also time to embrace and improve it.

Source: https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/03/23/how-effective-is-online-learning-what-the.html

Words that occur all the time in this text:

ENG1010 English for Effective Communication
Before you read:
1. Take a guess about what you will learn from this article.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. Be prepared to do the following as you read:
a. Highlight unfamiliar words
b. Underline referencing words (e.g. this, that, it, they, we, which, that)
c. Write down synonyms next to newly-learned words

Understanding the article:

1. Why would it be “impossible” for students to interact with teachers online if the epidemic
struck “a decade or two earlier” (line 81-82)?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. Name ONE advantage and ONE disadvantage of online lessons for students.
Advantage: ______________________________________________________________
Disadvantage: ____________________________________________________________
3. This article cited the studies of several scholars. Match the names with their experiment
designs and research findings in the table below:
K-12 students College students Students randomly assigned In-person > online class

Jessica Heppen ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
June Ahn ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
Andrew McEachin ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
Karl Alexander ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
Susanna Loeb ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐

Reflection:
1. As a university student, what difficulties do you face in online learning that are similar to
those faced by K-12 students?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. The University administered questionnaires to gather information about students’
experience and opinions in online classes. To what extent is it successful in evaluating the
effectiveness of online teaching?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. Line 54-55 suggests that students who are weaker in in-person classes are also more likely
to perform poorly in online classes. Explain why that might be the case.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
ENG1010 English for Effective Communication
Writing:
1. Write a 100-word summary of the article using the following words/phrases:
struggle / disrupt / in-person / engage/ oversight / skeptical

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