Online learning and blended learning : which is more effective?

![CDATA[One of the significant recent transformations in tertiary education is the trend to offer students the opportunity to offset internal classes with a greater online component in order to cope with competing demands from family and work commitments. Traditionally courses were offered internally with significant class room contact with a limited number of tertiary programmes being offered in external mode via “correspondence”. With the growth of the world-wide web and elearning some programs are now fully online but blended learning has also become popular, offering various combinations of internal classes and online content. This paper reports the results of delivering an introductory first-year property course using both online and blended learning. The paper considers the effectiveness of blended and online learning based on the thesis that blended learning is more effective as students have the advantages of both face-to-face learning and the online environment. A case study approach is adopted that involves two recent cohorts of students. Course statistics from the newly introduced Moodle software are used to analyse how these two groups of students use the online material and how these activities are correlated with their learning outcomes. The paper provides some insights into the use of the Moodle platform and how students react to the blended style of learning.]]