No Comparison: Distance Education Finds a New Use for 'No Significant Difference.'

This paper details the origins of the media comparison study methodology, its current use as an evaluation instrument in distance education, and recommendations for more stringent discrimination between research and evaluation in the field of distance learning. The following topics are discussed: (1) the history of research in instructional technology from 1968 to the present; (2) recent research in distance learning, including the difference between evaluation and research, and weaknesses in many instructional technology studies (e.g., failing to link the study to a robust theory, poor literature review, weak treatment implementation, measurement flaws, inadequate sample size, and poor analyses) that bias the research toward not finding a statistically significant difference; and (3) evaluation versus research in distance education, focusing on appropriate uses of media comparisons for distance program evaluation, as well as alternative methods and exemplary models. (Contains 55 references.) (MES)