| Summary: | Much of the research on educational technologies has shown that there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of learning with regards to broad notions of distance education compared with face-to-face education. Still, two issues of continuing debate are the identification of factors that have influenced these findings and methodological design flaws of experimental studies. In order to examine these two issues with regards to the effectiveness of online distance education (ODE) between 1995 and 2003, I conducted a meta-analysis of existing research. This statistical approach synthesized 23 studies from published literature and electronic data bases. This quantitative analysis provided the effect sizes for three outcome variables that measured student achievement, student satisfaction, and student dropout rates. In this research, I asked the following questions: (A) Is there a difference between the effectiveness of ODE and face-to-face (F2FE)? This question had three sub-questions: (i) Is there a difference in student achievement measured by final test scores between ODE and F2FE? (ii) Is there a difference in student satisfaction between ODE and F2FE? (iii) Is there a difference in student dropout rates between ODE and F2FE? (B) Does media influence the effectiveness of ODE? (C) Is there any evidence that proves there are methodological design flaws of experimental comparative studies in ODE? The findings are: (1) Comparison of the overall weighted mean effect size indicated that student achievement in ODE was slightly higher with no significant difference between ODE and F2FE (d = +0.023, p > 0.05); (2) Student satisfaction was lower in ODE than F2FE (d = - 0.3181, p < 0.05); (3) Dropout rate was a little higher in ODE but the difference was not significant (d = +0.1476, p > 0.05); (4) A pretest worked as a moderator that influenced student achievement more positively in ODE than F2FE. Student achievement effect size of Yes-pretest group was more positive for ODE (d = +0.211, p < 0.05) that that of No-pretest group {d=- 0.080, p>0.05); (5) Graduate courses were significantly less effective in ODE than in F2FE (d = -0.386, p < 0.05). Students in undergraduate courses of ODE achieved much higher test scores than those in F2FE (d = +0.163, p < 0.05); and (6) It could not be asserted that the methodological design of primary studies was seriously flawed.
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