Teaching online might improve face to face teaching

I've always thought that online teaching can force the instructor to rely on things other than classroom presence to get the job done, and this could result in rethinking teaching methods. In my mind, online teaching takes away the option of lecturing for the entire class period, so you've got to find other ways to engage students in learning. Today on chronicle.com there is a very short article which mentions the following:

Susan Patrick, president and chief executive of the North American Council for Online Learning, was one of the panelists at the event, held by Blackboard Inc. She said training teachers to teach online not only improved their teaching methods in a virtual classroom, but also in the traditional lecture hall. It helps teachers break out of old habits and gets them to rethink their approach to teaching children, she said, not just by using Web tools but often by reorganizing the structure of the course.

It would be nice to back that claim up with some kind of research. I didn't find anything related on the NACOL website, but there must be something somewhere.

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Technology & Instruction for UNEX

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