According to a recent article in the Chronicle for Higher Education, two researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln have conducted a study to measure the impact of ‘link-rot’ on online education.

‘Link-rot’ is the disappearance or movement of Web pages so that when someone follows a link on one page it leads them to a ‘Page not found’ error page or a different page entirely.

Links in the three online courses studied were found to have a half-life of about 55 months. That is, half the links were ‘bad’ within a 55 month period. This means that there is online maintenance involved in every course that needs to be, but is currently often not, included in the costs of offering the course.