Our Foundations of Instructional Design and Educational Technologies class participated in an online debate recently. It dealt with the 1990s journal-based debate between Robert B. Kozma (1994) and Richard E. Clark (1994) about media and its possible influence on learning. Clark’s research on educational media at the time led him to claim that there was no evidence of learning benefits from using any medium to deliver instruction. Kozma, on the other hand, called for the reevaluation of educational technology’s foundational assumptions. He asks, “In what ways can we use the capabilities of media to influence learning for particular students, tasks, and situations?” (p. 18) Kozma reframes the question from do to will media influence learning, a potential relationship.
I invite bloggers to contribute on either side of this debate from their own perspectives and experience. Certainly a great deal of research has taken place on the subject of media and learning, instructional media, and educational technology since Kozma and Clark had their debate in the academic journals of the mid-1990s.
My own view is that, as long as reframing the debate’s central question is on the table, I posit that media is method. The teacher who lectures to their class, uses a blackboard to highlight important points, and has a discussion section where his class divides into groups for focused discussions has a method, and his method is to use certain media to deliver his instructional materials. In this case the teacher is using the medium of vocal and visual tools in his lecture, blackboard and chalk media in his highlighting of important points, and small group social discourse as the medium for focused discussion.
My own view is that, as long as reframing the debate’s central question is on the table, I posit that media is method. The teacher who lectures to their class, uses a blackboard to highlight important points, and has a discussion section where his class divides into groups for focused discussions has a method, and his method is to use certain media to deliver his instructional materials. In this case the teacher is using the medium of vocal and visual tools in his lecture, blackboard and chalk media in his highlighting of important points, and small group social discourse as the medium for focused discussion.
The instructor who delivers their instruction with a PowerPoint presentation, question and answers, and an open discussion is using the PowerPoint media to deliver important information and get students thinking, a one-on-one vocal exchange medium for questions and answers between the teacher and individual students, and open group discourse as the medium for class discussion.
A constructivist teacher may use a jigsaw learning activity or a Jeopardy game approach to deliver instruction. Each of these methods, a jigsaw and a game, serves as the medium for delivering the intended instruction. If individuals or groups were asked to assess their experience with the activity or the game verbally or in written form these would be two other mediums for dispensing learning.
Webster (Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary, Office Edition) defines media as a variation of medium. I think the thesis that media is method is sound and I invite your thoughts for or against the thesis.
