An interesting short study from Babson based on responses from 4500 faculty across 2- and 4-year institutions, plus 590 adminstrators, about the effectiveness of online learning. Points of interest include that

• Even though faculty are pessimistic about the learning outcomes of online courses, those same faculty may at times advise a student to take an online course to meet the student’s needs
• The study shows clearly that once faculty engage in online learning, they tend to develop a more positive opinion of its effectiveness
• Administrators are routinely more gung ho about online than faculty
• All agree that the evaluation of online courses has a long way to go (and don’t feel that strongly about the value of current on-ground course evaluation systems either!)

Here’s the full study:

http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/IHE-BSRG-Conflict.pdf