Is it just a coincidence that it is nearly Halloween and Steve Tripp has once again released the "research on media" monster to stalk among us? Numerous researchers and theorists, including Lumsdaine (1963), Mielke (1968), Schramm (1977), and most notably, Clark and Salomon (1986), have tried to kill this monster, but like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy, it rises from the grave to terrorize (and in some cases mesmerize) another generation of educational technologists.
As a graduate student at Syracuse University in the last half of the 1970's, I had five courses and seminars with Professor Richard E. Clark who was the chair of the Educational Technology program at the time. Not surprisingly, my peers and I were exposed to Dr. Clark's influential "media as mere vehicles" thesis long before it earned its "front page" status in the Review of Educational Research journal in 1983.
Despite Dr. Clark's often compelling tutelage, we questioned his thesis from the very beginning. The vehicle analogy (media are "mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence learning any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition" Clark, 1983, p. 445), has face validity, but it is easily challenged. Having moved to frigid Syracuse from temperate Georgia, I knew that you don't transport ice cream on flat bed trucks anywhere in the South in August without affecting a lot more than its nutritional value.
However, what really bothered me then (and still does) about the vehicles and nutrition analogy is that it ignores the complexity of how people eat just as much as "research on media" ignores the complexity of how people learn. (Cris Brack [20 Oct 1996] makes this point eloquently in an earlier reply to Tripp.) Although the vehicles that deliver food may have some small effect on what people eat ("fresh" Maine lobster can now be consumed virtually anywhere in the USA thanks to Federal Express), our actual dining decisions are affected by a complex array of societal, economic, and personal dimensions including family history, culture, income, habits, allergies, advertising, education, stress, time, appetite, location, mobility, phobias, openness to new experiences, etc. Most of us eat things that we "know" are not nutritious and may even be harmful to our health. (Look at what is happening to Japanese health due to the influx of burgers, pizza, and fried chicken into the national diet.) Nutritionists have long conducted studies wherein rats and other subjects are fed different types of foods under laboratory controls, and the effects of these different diets are well documented. But the results of these studies have relatively little impact on people's behavior, and in many cases, the conclusions are quite confusing. Today's health kick (red wine, fish, bran, pasta) may be tomorrow's carcinogen. Diet fads (e.g., proteins versus carbohydrates) supposedly grounded in "scientific research" continue to mislead wealthy consumers while millions around the world are starving.
Similarly, research on media has little impact on how people learn. For starters, the results of these studies are most often equivocal. In addition, these studies themselves can easily be picked apart. (Jeff Oliver [20 Oct 1996] does a nice job of challenging Steve's "experiment" in a recent posting.) But the real danger of these studies is that they distract us from investigating what is important about learning, i.e., its essential complexity. In my opinion, the significance of Clark's original thesis was not its validity, but the fact that it was yet another nail in the coffin of research on media. Arguments like Steve Tripp's threaten to unleash another wave of these studies.
Why is research on media so persistent? First, it is easy to do, conducted as it is under controlled circumstances far removed from the rough and tumble world of actual education and training. Second, it is easily published, and as I have argued elsewhere (cf., Reeves, 1995) the need to "publish or perish" is what drives the research agendas of far too many academics. Third, on the surface, it appears to have utility to practitioners anxious for answers to questions such as should we invest in televisions or computers for our schools or training centers.
Ultimately, research on media has proven to be a fruitless path. Even if we could find reliable relationships between different media and different outcomes, no less an authority than Lee J. Cronbach (1982) has illustrated that we will never be able to pile up generalizations from these studies fast enough to have a meaningful influence on the actual practice of teaching and learning. As socially responsible researchers, we need to pay far more attention to the complexity of learning, rather than trying to oversimplify it for the sake of our analytic research methodologies. Salomon (1991) has argued that the analytic and systemic approaches to educational research can be complementary, but I fear that too many educational technologists will focus their energies and resources on analytic media research, for the reasons noted above, and avoid the much more challenging work of developmental research as described by Newman (1990) and others.
I can appreciate Steve Tripp's frustration with Clark's "media have no influence on learning" thesis that may have driven him to try to refute it with what I view as an equally frustrating experimental approach. However, Kozma's (1994) call to reframe the media debate is a much more powerful critique of Clark's thesis. Kozma concluded:
"I believe that if we move from "Do media influence learning?" to "In what ways can we use the capabilities of media to influence learning for particular students, tasks, and situations?" we will both advance the development of our field and contribute to the restructuring of schools and the improvement of education and training." (p. 18)
"Research on media" is not a path to answering the latter question. It never was and it never will be.
Clark, R.E. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445-459.
Clark, R.E., & Salomon, G. (1986). Media in teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching, Third edition New York: Macmillan.
Cronbach, L.J. (1982). Designing evaluations of educational and social programs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kozma, R.B. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), 7-19.
Lumsdaine, A.A. (1963). Instruments and media of instruction. In N. Gage (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Mielke, K.W. (1968). Questioning the questions of ETV research. Educational Broadcasting Review, 2, 6-15.
Newman, D. (1990). Opportunities for research on the organizational impact of school computers. Educational Researcher, 19(3), 8-13.
Reeves, T.C. (1995). Questioning the questions of instructional technology research. In M.R. Simonson & M. Anderson (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Research and Theory Division (pp. 459-470), Anaheim, CA.
Salomon, G. (1991). Transcending the qualitative-quantitative debate: The analytic and systemic approaches to educational research. Educational Researcher, 20(6), 10-18.
Schramm, W. (1977). Big media, little media. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.