Module 2:
How Does Technology Influence Learning

The Medium is the Message.
Marshall McLuhan, 1967.

Goals:

• To understand the issues involved in the use of particular media for instruction.

• To think about the role of the design aspect, as distinct from the medium, in influencing technology-based learning.

Probably the best known advocate of the position that any medium has certain inherent properties which influence how we perceive it, and, over time, how we expect to perceive it, is the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan. He is one of a group of writers about technology which philosophers refer to as ‘technological determinists’ (Lee, 1997) or  some similar phrase.

While McLuhan focussed extensively on television and other technologies of the sixties, over the past two decades there have been many writers who have talked about the emergence of special ways of perceiving and learning in children being raised in a computer or networked world (see for example, Papert, 1980, 1983, or Tapscott, 1997).

As instructional designers one of the fundamental questions we have to ask ourselves is: to what extent does the medium in which we develop instruction influence that instruction?  This in turn leads to a number of additional questions:  What is a medium?  Which properties may be thought to be inherent in a given medium?  

We must ask the first question because we are interested in what makes effective instruction and, unfortunately, as the other two questions illustrate, the answer to this question is not straightforward when we talk about the creation of technology based learning. Part of the reason for this lies in the complexity of human learning, and part of it lies in the limits of the research methods which are available to us.

Consider the following quotations:

As you read the two articles you may want to wrestle more with aspects of the questions posed above.  When we we try to define what a medium is can we say a computer is a different medium from the Internet and is the Web, in turn, a separate medium?  When you think about what properties are inherent in a medium, ask yourself  what might be the difference between a full screen high resolution, digital image such as MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, on a computer monitor and a video (television) image of similar size and resolution?  In the Kozma article you will find a discussion of the differences between an attriibute and a variable which might help you in thinking about this.  

It is also useful to remember that the attributes of various media also change over time, making some older discussions and research less relevant.  For example, the processing and, particularly, the image processing capability of computers have changed substantially and rapidly in the past 20 years.  What might be the implications of this with regard to research on  learning from computers that was done in the seventies, eighties, or even the nineties?  Even the older medium of television is not the same as the changed formats and resolution of DVD (MPEG-2) and the FCC approved high definition television standard come into common use.

Readings and Activities:

In this module you are asked to read the following two articles and participate in the threads in the online conference related to this topic throughout the week:

Clark, R.E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42 (2), 21-29.

Kozma, R. L. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42 (2), 7-19.

References:

Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of Educational Research, 53 (4), 445-459.

Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42 (2), 21-29.

Kozma, R. B. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42 (2), 7-19.

McLuhan, M. & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the message. New York: Bantam.

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New York: Basic Books.

Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York: Basic Books.

Tapscott, D. (1997). Growing up digital: The rise of the net generation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Lee, A. Y. (1997). Media technology perspectives and their curriculum implications for media education. Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 25 (3), 209-234.