These are some of my postings on this topic:
Posted Date: September 29, 2012 9:06 PM
Jackie,
Great points. I agree that supporting Mayer’s belief in the science of e-learning requires empirical evidence that improvements in student performance can be attributed solely to the technology used. I think it is a difficult task to separate effective educational design and the effective use of technology. What about a experiment in which lousy paper and pencil instruction is compared to lousy multi-media instruction? Would there still be no difference attributable to the use of technology? Just wondering out loud….
Don
Posted Date: September 27, 2012 9:14 PM
Brendan,
I am nearly 51 years old and the idea of being trendy seems like an unattainable (undesirable) goal but I do try to keep up. I have to admit that I chuckled out loud the other day when the fifth grade monitors visited my kindergarten classroom and watched our morning video. They quickly pointed out the the singer was Will I Am (spelling?) from the Black-eyed Peas (spelling?) and thought the song was pretty cool. Who knew? Cool and trendy when you least expect it. I do think the technology unitentionally helped. 🙂
Don
Posted Date: September 27, 2012 9:05 PM
David,
I understand your point about dominant cultures and the relevance of technology in a rural environment but would argue that this view is , in itself, a bit stereotypical. I worked and lived in Tanzania, one of the poorest countries on the planet, where cellphone use is rampant. Landlines are so unreliable that very few people have them. Even well paid Tanzanians ($2.00 to $3.00 per day) avoided land lines and had a cellphone. I agree that Western ideas and solutions may not apply or work in non-Western societies but the use and application of technology seems to cut through some of our notions. Thanks for listening,
Don
Posted Date: September 22, 2012 7:01 AM
I started this week’s readings with Mayer (2003) and was immediately impressed with this concise and neat package of support for educational technology. By the end, however, I had my doubts. The cliche of when something seems to be to good to be true….. sprang to mind as a reconsidered this article and thought more about evidence, theory, and applications (Mayer, 2003, p. 297) and about replicated research and rigorous, appropriate methods (Mayer, p. 299).
What was I missing?
To begin, I agree with Mayer that his article reports “theory-based principles for designing electronic learning environments” (Mayer 2003, p 297) but I do not believe that Mayer’s results support the efficacy of e-learning versus other forms of learning. The nine principles (effects) he reports read like a manual for effective teaching. None of them are unique to the e-learning or to the technology employed. Back in the good old days, I taught my Grade Ones about whales using a simple hand-made poster. I showed the poster, tapped the images to gain attention, read the captions, used student language, and reviewed the poster throughout our unit. Kind of sounds like modality, contiguity, multimedia, personalization, redundancy, pretraining, and signaling.
Secondly, I was a but surpised to notice an absence of contradictory data in Mayer’s findings. This may have been more evident in his original papers but I am used to seeing it in a review atricle. Not all effects will be present all of the time for all learners. It just seems too neat. The flaws in current research point the way to refined, more accurate research. Contradictory results are important outcomes to report.
Looking at Mayer’s results in “Table 1. Some Replicated Effects in Multimedia Learning” (Mayer, p. 301), I wondered about the use of Z-Scores. I have used these scores in standardized testing to compare the performance of a student to the general population and to compare performance across tests. So I guess this works in Mayer’s case? I am sure that in terms of may experience in population comparison, results are not considered highly significant until they fall outside the -2 to +2 range. I would have felt more confident with standards score, errors of measure and confidence bands. Error is part of all data collection.
When I got to Mayer’s References (p. 311), I noted that two-thirds of them were authored or co-authored by Mayer. Clearly his research supports his research. I do not see evidence that his results has been replicated by other researchers. Reliability, validity, and peer review are key to the correct interpretation and application of results.
As so, I continued reading and wondering, “What was I missing?” I found myself drawn to Kozma but agreeing with Clark. As stated by Kozma in referring to Clark, “the results of studies that appear to favor one medium over another are due not to the medium but to the method that is introduced along with the medium.” (Kozma, 1994, p. 7) ThinkerTools and the Jasper Woodbury Series are exemplars of effective teaching. I’d expect good educational design to effectively incorporate technology.
So, what was I missing?
I then I reread Kozma’s reframe, “Perhaps the appropriate question is not do but will media influence learning. (Kozma 1994, p. 7) and Clark’s assertion that, “the designer can and must choose the less expensive and most congitively efficient way to represent and deliver instruction (Clark 2004, p. 22) and I think I figured it out…..
So back to my single whale poster which took hours of research and many attempts to produce. Thirty years later I have produced, in less time, an entire multimedia salmon unit which uses technology extensively. In this unit we watch live salmon spawn, map out their lifecycle, observe each stage of their development, chart ATU’s, dissect them, visit a hatchery, and monitor a salmon stream. All without leaving the classroom. We also raise salmon and make field trips to watch the spawn and to release our fry. We do some hands-on experiments, sing songs and read books. Effective teaching? You bet! Cognitively efficient? Yes, Kindergärtners become Ichthyologists! Efficient for the me the designer? Absolutely. Hours turn into minutes of preparation.
And so….I think it is time to refram the question….but that is another post….