We wrapped up the class debate on Media vs. Method - Are you a Clark or a Kozma follower? I found it interesting... Given that the class consists of Instructional Design Ed. Technology majors, it only makes sense that most of us would lean toward the Kozma side of the debate - which is to say that yes, media does influence learning. Ultimately the class saw some logical truths from both sides of the argument and comments came up questioning if the two side could even be defined as a debate in the first place.
But...in the initial stages of the debate, the Clark supporters didn't want to commit. The class was assigned who they would initially side with. Whether or not we actually stood on that side, we were to pretend as if we did and try to argue in favor. The Clark defenders waffled and wishy washed at first. They wrote as if they really didn't want anyone to think they actually believed Clark's purist opinion so they provided disclaimers - i.e. "since I have to take the Clark side, I have to say it this way ... but ..."
As more people contributed to the article, greater ideas opened our minds to what each theorist was really saying. The written defenses started to get more fervent regardless of which side the defender was on. So who won the debate? I don't think we ever really decided, which is probably why it still remains the great debate.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that Clark seemed initially to be confusing. In part because the title of his article is so strong, I think it in some ways soured a lot of us to his actual argument. In his response article it sounds much more that "media is interchangable in learning" is his argument, which isn't as hard to grapple with. It did seem though, that by then end of things, a good number of people came to support his view.
ReplyDelete