David Lazarus, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, feels an understandable?duty to educate his young son and prepare him ?for whatever life may throw at him.? But when it comes to video games, Lazarus is at a loss; if his son requires assistance in that arena?tips on how to beat a certain level in Super Mario Galaxy 2, for instance?he must, and usually does, find it online. Thus has Lazarus developed an appreciation of the merits of online learning. ?In the past,? he writes, ?I'd tended to think of online courses as a second-rate form of academia?virtual classes for virtual students. I was wrong.? In fact, he continues, a recent study from the U.S. Department of Education actually found that ?students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction.? If it works for beating Bowser, maybe it will work for beating calculus.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow