Online Material Decreases Class Attendance?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Henry E. Schaffer[Edit][Delete]: Online Material Decreases Class Attendance?, EDUCAUSE Blogs [Edit][Delete] January 30, 2006

[link: 4 Hits] As usual, poor and incomplete research results in contradictory reports about the impact of technology in the classroom; one study says the use of iPods caused no change, while another (consisting apparently of a reporter asking some friends) draws the opposite conclusion. If we look at the reporter's 'data', though, what we find is a communications professor who, even with no resources posted online, could only attract 60 to 70 percent of his students (yes, apparently 30 percent of his students decided that seeing nothing was better than sitting through one of his lectures). So I have only one response when I see a statement like this: "the result, Allen said, was that only about one-third of her 154 students showed up for most lectures". More...