Beyond "No Significant Difference"

Another potential problem with comparisons of the learning effectiveness of

online and traditional
education is epistemological and involves the notion of no significant difference
itself. The "no
significant difference" paradigm stems from an article written by Richard Clark
[21] for the Review of
Educational Research in which he argued that media do not make a difference in
learning but rather that
instruction does. Clark was particularly concerned with several studies of
computer-assisted instruction
(CAI) that compared it with traditional instruction and found that students at a
variety of levels learned
more and faster from CAI [22]. Clark argued that these and other findings of
significant differences
between technology-based and traditional interventions resulted from more
rigorously designed
instruction, not from media effects. Media, he maintained, were like trucks, they
were delivery vehicles
and no more.

What mattered, according to Clark, was the quality of instruction, not how it was
delivered. The CAI
studied, for example, was rigorously designed according to principles of
instructional design, while the
traditional instruction with which it was compared was not. Thus, Clark argued
that media effects were a
chimera because if instruction were held constant there would be no significant
learning differences
between technology-based and traditional education. Early proponents of
distance education picked up
on Clark's ideas to support their cause. Well designed instruction, they argued,
was well designed
instruction, regardless of how it was delivered. Thus, they maintained, as long as
the quality of
instruction delivered over distance was as good as the quality of traditional
education, there would be no
significant differences in learning between them. Indeed, as we have seen, the
research supports such a
view.

What makes CAI so effective, for example, is its ability to deliver instruction that is

individualized for every student and that provides them with extensive practice
and immediate feedback.
Of course a human tutor working one-on-one with an individual student could do
the same [24], but
teachers working in traditional classrooms cannot and the notion of tutors for all
students is more than
impractical. All media particularly support specific kinds of instruction and are less
supportive of others
[25]. Indeed, most educational technologists today agree that instruction should
be designed to take
advantage of the unique characteristics of media that matter or that can be made
to matter in teaching and
learning