Week #3 Post

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

The 1994 journal article written by Richard E Clark is a review and summary of the existing cannon of arguments from various scholars  including  Lumsdaine (1963) who deny the ability of media to influence learning and argue that the “benefits of media were primarily economic and their use was to develop the technology of instructional method” The scholar Mielke is cited by Clark as referenced in the Educational Broadcast Review (Mielke, 1968) in the journal article titled “Questions the Questions of ETV Research where Mielke states, “adequately designed research on the learning benefits of various media would yield no significant benefits between treatments.” Wilbur Shramm (1977) concludes that learning is influenced, “More by the content and instructional  strategy in a medium than by the type of medium.” Ultimately, Clark reports puzzlement as to why his restated conclusion that there are, “no differences expected” regarding the application of technology to learning 10 years after he first made the statement elicited “so much attention”.

The author’s argument that,”media will never influence learning” has direct application to adult education and/or employee training programs in business where media/technology is often a significant part of the training/adult learning program, and because these are environments where funding and resources for program maintenance, let alone expansion are often under pressure and face resistance. Familiarity with Clark’s rational helps proponents to understand, anticipate, blunt, redirect and ultimately effectively combat the naysayers. Reliable, multidimensional metrics and reports and data developed over time may be among the first lines of defense/offense.

The article is particularly useful because it presents the strongly-reasoned and well supported view of a scholar  who present the viewpoint that technology in and of itself does not bring a learning benefit to education and that it never will. The  grocery truck analogy suggesting the lack of importance to nutrition made by the truck doing the transporting function is a very elegant argument. As a novice scholar to the educational technology field it is useful to read and understand the point of view of the side of the academy which denies technology as a necessary, valuable or useful addition to the field. Until reading this article this viewpoint seemed entirely overshadowed by those who seem to believe that technology is always good and useful in the context of education.

Week #1 Post

Spiro, R. J., & DeSchryver, M. Constructivism: When it’s the wrong idea and when it’s the only idea. S. Tobias & T. Duffy (Eds.)(2009)

The 2009 journal article co-authored by Spiro and DeSchryver offers a balanced, well-supported review of the argument that “the success of direct instructional guidance approaches in well-structured domains (WSDs) cannot extend to ill-structured domains (ISDs), in principle because of the the very nature of those domains.” The authors begin by defining and explaining the nature of ISDs citing examples including Social Studies, Humanities and the Arts then contrasting and drawing references to WSDs such as Science and Mathematics and close with compelling arguments on how a constructivist view has better application to learning in a web-enabled, web centric learning environment with better opportunity for deep and fast learning.

The authors clarification about how Professional domains can still be ill structured  such as  teaching where  a prospective teacher can take a dozen course on “methods” but one in the field it becomes clear that “It’s not that simple”,”it depends” have direct and particularly meaningful applications to learning in a professional/business environment where rigid instructional structures are not necessarily the best fit for adult learners who may reasonably expect to be able to apply some of their acquired experience and knowledge in certain learning scenarios.

The article is particularly useful as I begin to develop depth and breadth in my fundamental research position in the field of Education Technology. Large concepts such as Deep Learning,  New Gutenberg Revolution, WSDs and ISDs are helpful tools in helping me understand and communicate effectively in this domain. The Random-Access paradigm of information access seems to hold particular value as we look at how to better organize and make online training and learning system better and more relevant for today’s increasing web-ready, web-savvy, social network learners.