How effective is online education? This is Future Tense for March 22nd. I'm Jon Gordon. Internet-based instruction promises to free us from the restrictions of geography. But a new study finds that you might learn more in a traditional classroom. Michigan State University students who took a virtual micro economics class from professor Carl Liedholm performed worse on exams- ten percent worse - than those who attended Liedholm's live micro economics class. Liedholm says his study took into account and controlled for differences in SAT scores and GPAs for the two kinds of class. (q/a)