New study highlights online education

csmonitor.com : Children born since the dawn of the Internet Age probably wouldn’t think twice about learning online. They might just as soon read a Shakespeare sonnet on Twitter as hear it live from a teacher in a classroom.And yet the educational establishment still debates whether e-learning (aka “virtual schooling” or “distance education”) can be as good as traditional in-person teaching in a campus setting. Jokes are still being made about successful e-schools, such as the University of Phoenix, as being “diploma mills."Now the results of a recent federal study should help “log out” of that tired debate. The study, released by the US Department of Education, found that many types of online education for a college degree are better at raising student achievement than face-to-face teaching is.