Daily Archives: September 3, 2013

No significant difference

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Clarke’s (1983) conclusion stood for nearly three decades, supported by meta-analysis of very many educational experiments ― “The point is that no matter who or what is being taught, more than one medium will produce adequate learning results and we must choose the less expensive media or waste limited education resources”. (Russell 2001)

This was employed both as an argument against use of new (expensive) technology, and as a challenge to explore new domains of learning that might be exceptional. There is an outline of the refutation debate here.

Real costs of technology have fallen, along with incidental costs (such as the difficulty of orienting teachers to use of new media). However, it is not only the cost side of Clarke’s equation that has changed. In the last few years there has been a growing raft of experimental results that favour distance education and use of educational technology, for specific purposes in specific contexts, over traditional instruction. (FSU 2011)

For example, there seems at least to be good evidence that appropriate step-based tutoring systems (e.g. Mathletics) can be better than average face-to-face tutors. (VanLehn 2012) More generally, distance education students outperform traditionally instructed students, in well designed courses. (Means et al 2009)

There’s now a good justification for critical re-examination of traditional classroom technology and pedagogy.

References
  • Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media. Review of Educational Research, 53(4), 445.
  • Moffat, D. (2013). Clark and Kozuma debate is still relevant. Dave Moffat. [blog]http://dcmoffat71.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/clark-and-kozma-debate-is-it-still-relevant/
  • Russell T.L. (1999). The No Significant Difference Phenomenon. NCSU.
  • FSU (2011) Research on the Effectiveness of Online Learning: A compilation of research on online learning. The Future of State Universities.
  • VanLehn K 2011. The relative effectiveness of human tutoring, intelligent tutoring systems, and other tutoring systems. Educational Psychologist, 46(4):197-221
  • Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., Jones, K., (2009) Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. US Department of Education.