PEDAGOGICAL DESIGNS FOR E-LEARNING

Introduction

The main point  is to explore issues surrounding the influence of media (information and communications technology) on learning, and to examine pedagogical designs for optimizing elearning.

The following are the key questions in relation to an exploration of these issues. Do media influence learning? Can we differentiate the unique influences of media on learning from the influences of instructional method? How can we optimize the influences of media on learning? Do we need different pedagogical designs for e-learning? 

If yes, then what are those designs that can optimize e-learning?

Do media influence learning?

While it is clear that information and communications technology

offers tremendous opportunities for capturing, storing,disseminating and communicating a wide variety of information,does it influence learning, and if it does, what is the nature and extent of that influence? These questions are at the heart of a longstanding debate and discussion on the influences of media on learning.

The origins of this debate and discussion on the influences of media on learning date back to the invention of radio and television. On developing a camera that used film rolls, Thomas Edison had expected that the motion picture would revolutionize education and make schooling a lot more attractive and motivating for students (Heinich, Molenda & Russell, 1993). Commentators of that time had suggested that instead of wanting to stay away from  school, students would rush back to school and not want to leave

 school. While we know that this did not actually happen, the moving image did influence our ability to represent many things in many different ways, in and outside of school.

Several decades after Edison's inventions, and based on the growing influence of radio, television and other media on our lives,Marshall McLuhan claimed that the “medium is the message”

(McLuhan, 1964). With this aphorism, McLuhan was suggesting that each medium has characteristics and capabilities that have the potential to shape, direct and enhance our capabilities (Campbell, 2000). As such McLuhan saw media as “extensions of man” which is the subtitle of his classic book (McLuhan, 1964).

The 1960s and 70s saw growing enthusiasm in the use of computers in education. This was naturally followed by similar interest in the impacts of computers on learning with many researchers concluding that while media may have some economic benefits, they did not show any benefits on learning (Lumsdaine, 1963; Mielke, 1968). Several leading researchers of the time argued that learning and any learning gain is actually

caused by the way the subject matter content is presented via a medium, rather than the medium itself (Clark & Solomon, 1986;Kulik, 1985; Schramm, 1977).

A prominent contributor to this discussion on media research- Richard Clark - has in fact proclaimed that “media will never influence learning” (Clark, 1994). He has in fact suggested that“media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence stuch achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition” (Clark,

1983, p. 445). Clark concedes that media can have important influences on the cost and speed of learning, but argues that it is only the instructional method that can influence learning. He defines instructional method as “the provision of cognitive processes or strategies that are necessary for learning but which student cannot or will not provide for themselves” (Clark, 1994.p. 5). Clark's argument is that media is replaceable and therefore“any teaching method can be delivered to students by many media or a variety of mixtures of media attributes with similar learningresults" (Clark, 1994, p. 5).