importance of reading
The Influence of Media on Learning: The Debate Continues
SLMQ Volume 22, Number 4, Summer 1994
Robert B. Kozma, Director, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International
Do media influence learning? Perhaps it is time to rephrase the question: How, do media affect learning? Perhaps it is time to go beyond our concern with "proving" that media "cause" learning so that we can begin to explore the question in more complex ways. Perhaps we should ask, what are the actual and potential relationships between media and learning? Can we describe and understand those relationships? And can we create a strong and compelling influence of media on learning through improved theories, research, and instructional designs?
There is a certain urgency about this question. In the near future, telephone, cable television, and digital computer technologies will merge,(5) presenting the prospect of interactive video integrated with large multimedia databases to be distributed to people in various settings all over the world. If we do not soon understand the relationship between media and learning—if we have not forged such a relationship this technology may be used primarily for interactive soap operas and online purchases of merchandise. Its educational uses may be driven primarily by benevolent movie moguls who design "edutainment" products whose contribution to learning may be minimal.
In order to understand the actual and potential relationships between media and learning, we must first understand why we have thus far failed to establish a causal connection. In large part, this failure is due to the fact that our theories, research, and designs have been constrained by vestiges of the behavioral roots of instructional technology.(6) Both traditional instructional design models and comparative media studies rest on the assumptions of the behaviorist paradigm: media "stimuli" are described according to the surface features of their technologies, and their effect on
SLMQ Volume 22, Number 4, Summer 1994
Robert B. Kozma, Director, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International
Do media influence learning? Perhaps it is time to rephrase the question: How, do media affect learning? Perhaps it is time to go beyond our concern with "proving" that media "cause" learning so that we can begin to explore the question in more complex ways. Perhaps we should ask, what are the actual and potential relationships between media and learning? Can we describe and understand those relationships? And can we create a strong and compelling influence of media on learning through improved theories, research, and instructional designs?
There is a certain urgency about this question. In the near future, telephone, cable television, and digital computer technologies will merge,(5) presenting the prospect of interactive video integrated with large multimedia databases to be distributed to people in various settings all over the world. If we do not soon understand the relationship between media and learning—if we have not forged such a relationship this technology may be used primarily for interactive soap operas and online purchases of merchandise. Its educational uses may be driven primarily by benevolent movie moguls who design "edutainment" products whose contribution to learning may be minimal.
In order to understand the actual and potential relationships between media and learning, we must first understand why we have thus far failed to establish a causal connection. In large part, this failure is due to the fact that our theories, research, and designs have been constrained by vestiges of the behavioral roots of instructional technology.(6) Both traditional instructional design models and comparative media studies rest on the assumptions of the behaviorist paradigm: media "stimuli" are described according to the surface features of their technologies, and their effect on