Carolyn Heinrich on Whether the Labor Market Offers the Same "Credit" for Online Learning

Poverty Research & Policy

In this episode, Carolyn Heinrich of Vanderbilt University talks about a study she conducted with Jennifer Darling-Aduana, Annalee Good, and Huiping (Emily) Cheng that looked at the use of online education products in high schools to help students who were falling behind. Heinrich describes her team's observations of online course-taking and the longer-term academic and labor market outcomes of students in online settings versus those in traditional instruction. They find that, on average, students who took more credit recovery courses in online settings generally fared worse. Heinrich says that this raises equity concerns and asks if we are "disadvantaging the exact students we’re trying to help in the way we roll this out?"

To learn more about the study, the instruments used in classroom observation, and related publications, see https://my.vanderbilt.edu/digitaled/.