Kozma, 1991
From Eduwiki
Angel Jonathan
testing
INTRODUCTION:
Robert Kozma 
wrote a rebuttal to Richard Clark’s 
paper, Media Will Never Influence Learning. Kosma’s paper, Learning With Media, argues that technology does in fact have a profound effect on learning. Kozma espouses the philosophy that “learning is viewed as an active, constructive process whereby the learner strategically manages the available cognitive resources to create new knowledge by extracting information from the environment and integrating it with information already stored in memory” (p.2-3).
Kozma begins his article discussing short-term memory and long-term memory in relation to learning. He then introduces the new science of distributed cognition, which has two schools of thought:
1) System view
2) Personal view
Media Defined:
· Media can be defined by:
o Technology
o Symbol systems
o Processing capabilities
· Most observable feature of media:
o Technology
Kozma’s article argues that learning with media is a complimentary process. He views learning as an active, constructive process. As such, some learners can benefit from the use of media. The research in his article, therefore set out to demonstrate the relative cognitive effects of learning with different media.
The article is a challenge to the 1983 Clark paper which insisted research showed no evidence that technology improved education. Kozma suggests that this position needs to be modified. While it can be said that some will learn particular tasks regardless of the delivery device, others will utilize a particular medium (texts and pictures, for example) to help construct knowledge. Furthermore, he states that certain characteristics of media influence aspects of the learning process. For example, some student’s learning is influenced by a mediums symbol system and processing capability while others can learn without technology by relying on prior knowledge. Kozma argues that Clark’s theory implying differences in learning are due to method and not medium denies an existing relationship between method and medium. Kozma insists that the medium enables and constrains the method, while the method draws on and instantiates the capability of the medium. In many cases, learning is influenced by methods, but only because the learner takes advantage of the medium’s capabilities.
Despite his argument opposing Clark, Kozma suggests that there needs to be more research on the matter. A case for this might be the theory that pictures with texts increase recall in learners. However, the current research does not show how?
