Do media influence learning? Revisiting the debate in the context of distance education

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Vicki Carter

In this article Vicki Carter, Instructional Programmer at The Pennsylvania State University, reviews the academic literature of distance education which has considered whether the media and technologies of education affect the learning which takes place. She finds that the conventional answer, especially from a North American perspective, is in the negative, despite a minority who assert the contrary. While the author argues in conclusion for the second of these positions, she suggests that the frames of reference used by distance education have been too narrow, and that valuable insights can be found in the fields of neurology and mass communications, as well as in feminist approaches to the situated nature of knowledge.