In Clark’s (1994), “Media will never Influence Learning” his argument appears to be that media is simply the vehicle to deliver the content and has no impact on student motivation or learning. The active ingredient is the instructional methods used to activate student learning. He states that no one media or media attribute causes learning to occur, that the Instructional designers choice of media for delivery should be based on 2 factors; cost effectiveness and efficiency. Clark also states that with the scarcity of educational dollars and the expense of technology the focus should be on the instructional methods and not on finding, buying new technology if learning does not occur with current technology.
Kozma’s(1994), “Will Media Influence Learning? Reframing the Debate”, on the other hand states that learning is an active process of knowledge construction. Learners connect prior knowledge with new knowledge to construct new learning. Media is key to activating prior knowledge and helping learners construct meaningful representations of abstract concepts. These representations are internalized over time to become part of the learners’ cognitive processes. Kozma supports the need for further research into how media interacts with and influences learning. Instructional designers can then design interventions to embed the most effective media into the processes of knowledge construction.
I do believe, much like Clark, that cost effectiveness and efficiency are important factors given the economic climate of today’s schools. The newest, most expensive technology is not necessarily going to improve student learning. However I also agree with Kozma’s belief that learning is an interactive process and that the use of media enables learners to build background knowledge, provides representations and facilitates active learning. I teach in an inner city school which services students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Students lack the experiences with the world and have very little background knowledge upon which to connect new learning. The use of media in my classroom has facilitated the building of background knowledge, has allowed students to interact with the content in ways that were not open to them using traditional classroom methods. I view the use of Media in my classroom as an instructional strategy, one way to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of my students.