Diner zoran

Week 4

How would you answer someone who charged that your field has really failed to make a positive impact on education (or training)?. In responding, you might want to refer to the status of the field and perhaps some issues and trends.

2. Based on the Clark-Kozma debate, what is your position on the question of whether (or how) media affect learning? Justify.

3. If media themselves do not improve instruction, what is so great about Instructional Technology? As the question is asked in business, what is your value proposition? That is, in what way does IT claim to add value to the enterprise of training or education?

If someone asks me the question your field has really failed to make a positive impact on education (or training)? I would say that everybody has a capacity of learning that we cannot interfere too much. The best we can do is to facilitate learning and make it efficient in terms of time and effort. Clark (1983) argues that the media itself does not improve learning. He claims that it is not that the students learn better with T.V. but rather a specific method with any appropriate media (TV, radio or book) may help student to be successful in learning. There exist some studies showing significant improvement in learning by the use of new media, but also lots of more studies show non-significant results. One criticism that Clark (1983) makes is that the conducted researches, in general resulted in favor of the effect of media, lack of controlling the variables other than media such as the method used, the lecturers, the amount of information and time given to learners etc. This makes the studies confounding and interpretable at the level of the positive effect of media. For some cases, such as chess learning, Clark accepts that lack of visuospatial abilities in children may be compensated by the use of media capable of showing motions (TV, video). But he remarks that this facilitation is not significant for everyone such as children with high visuospatial abilities. As result the effect of media depends also on the cognitive abilities that children posse. In opposition to Clark, Kozma (1991) believes that media can alter both the cognitive representations and cognitive processes of learner. Kozma (1991) also suggests that each media uses its own symbolic and representational system and if this is in parallel with the systems that learner uses in learning process then media can offer amelioration. At this point, in accordance with Kozma, Clark (1991) also

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points out that the state-of-art of the learner is important for media to be successful and effective. He thinks that media and learner should be in harmony in instruction in the way they use and represent the information. In questioning the effect of media, Clark (1991) prefers not to deal with directly the media itself like effect of TV or radio, but rather he want to elaborate a discussing about the attributes of media. The attributes may be the slowing the motion of objects, unwrapping 3D images or zooming in or out to the objects. Various media may have some similar and some distinct attributes which make them interchangeable for some subjects. This last point suggests that instruction does not make use of the media directly but its attributes. About cognitive representations and process and I think both researchers Kozma and Clark are suggesting that media or media attributes can led learner to experience and gain new cognitive skills and can alter existing cognitive structures and processes which I in turn agree with them. About the discussion of unstandardized studies, Clark (1983) raises up that Media research needs to be replicable. He suggests that the necessary conditions for replicable results needs to be determined. He says The determination of necessary conditions is fruitful approach when analyzing all instructional problems and it is the foundation of all instructional theories (p453). For this purpose, he raises the need of developing the media attribute theories which is in fact not sufficient without effective methods that make use of them. To sum up the whole discussion, I think the existence of a media or a technology does not automatically make learning better. A recent study in among the first student cohort in USA, shows that a software mediated environment in teaching mathematics does not makes students more successful when we compare it with a conventional classroom environment (Dynarski, M. et al., 2007). Interestingly, the change was not in the performances of students but in their experiences. With the use of such software the instructors made less lectures, and students preferred to be less interactive in class and learn on-their own. It is clear that media has no magic in it which makes people more intelligent. In this respect, Kozma and Clark agree that there is no evidence for a causal connection between media and learning (Clark, 2002, p319). According to Clark (2002), which I also agree, even if the level of knowledge seems to be unchanged, the effect of media can be found in improving the time of learning/instruction and degreasing in amount of mental efforts. An important work depends on the theories for the learning and to identify the way cognitive systems process information. Also not less

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important than theoreticians, the designers of instruction have a crucial role on taking into consideration of both the audience of instruction, their background, necessary mental process and the appropriate media which facilitates learning experience and make it an effective.

References: Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media, Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445-459. Kozma, R. B. (1991). Learning with Media, Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 179-211 Clark, R. E. (2002). What is Next in the Media and Methods Debate, Ch.18, 327-337. Dynarski, M. et al . (2007). Effectiveness Of Reading And Mathematics Software Products: Findings From The First Student Cohort, U.S. Department of Education.

3 Questions:

1 Are methods of instruction independent from media? 2 Can media affect self-learners in term of mental representations and processes? If yes, how? 3 How can use of new media/technology make learning worse?