Individualized education

how does f2f and online learning compare?
What about blended learning?
best practices in online learning
conditions

This report is interesting from the librarian point of view.  I was not able to find much research about K12 librarians.  In fact, if anything I found more reports lamenting the lack of research into K12 education.  Even in the AASL forums and the iNACOL forumes on linked in or on their sites, there was little to be found abou the issues of online librarians at the K12 level.   Is this just because there is no specific research on the concept of online librarians for K12?   Most online schools don't employ librarians and since education doesn't really make a decision unless it's based on research, we're hardly likely to move forward in this area. It's not even a topic for most people in online administration.  The answer I got in informal conversations was that most online students were not full time and therefore had access to a school librarian with a collection centered around the general curriculum.
It was interesting to see that the DOE also found that too little research had been done.  Perhaps a report like this will free up some funding and we'll see more research done into K12 online education.

If 43/50 studies showed that online learners did better than f2f, "if they were older"  does that mean that elementary online studies were not done or does it mean that elementary online teaching is not as effective?  Or does it mean that there are simply too few online elementary students to really figure it out?  If students spend more time on task to learn more in the online environment, what does this really mean?  Is the online environment more challenging - and therefore more successful?  Is it that f2f classrooms don't spend enough time on a topic to really require learning?

Online education has been around for a while, and it's growing exponentially. There is definitely room for research into this area.   Traditionally, action research is a way of gathering information from classrooms yet we're not seeing much action research coming out of online schools.   Part of this is simply because teachers at the k12 level are not full time, may teach only one course online in addition to a full time job and do not have the time/energy/resources or the push from administration to get involved in action research.

Studies indicate that "self monitoring of understanding are effective" - reflection works in the f2f classroom as well.  Is this better or more effective in online learning?  This didn't seem to compare it with the f2f efforts at reflection.
The authors do point out that it's possible that what works for older students /adult learners may differ from what works for K12 - which leads us back to the real necessity for more research to be done in this area.

"policy makers will lack scientific evidence of the effectiveness of these emerging alternatives to f2f instruction"   In an industry that is research driven- there's no way that new policies will be emplaced without more research.

As I think about this report - I realize that I can possibly do some action research in my own online classroom..  I'm sure that it's possible. After all, learning about teaching is something that we do each day... and documenting what works and what isn't working is good practice for any classroom.