It's the method, not the medium

In a reply to my posting E-learning: An oxymoron?, which discussed Jakob Nielsen's rather negative views on the efficacy of e-learning, Tom Werner of Brandon-Hall brought some interesting research to my attention:

The research (Sitzmann et al., 2006, a meta-analysis of 96 studies) refutes Nielsen's point. It's the instructional method, not the delivery medium, that makes the difference. When web-based instruction and classroom instruction that have similar methods (feedback, practice, etc.) are compared, there's little or no difference in outcomes.

This is interesting to me, because I've long thought that method and medium are often confused as concepts when the pros and cons of technology-assisted learning are being argued. As Tom Werner reminds us, it is the choice of method that determines the effectiveness of an intervention, not whether that method is implemented face-to-face, over a telephone, through the printed page or via a computer screen. True, media have inherent constraints and opportunities, so you simply cannot implement any method through any medium (you can't have a discussion with a book) and some media may do a slightly better job than others in implementing a particular method (a book displays images in higher resolution than a computer screen), but the argument holds true generally.

The choice of medium is not a pedagogical one, it is primarily practical. Once you have chosen the methods that you feel will best fulfil your goals, you select the media that will allow you to implement those methods in the most efficient manner. If you have chosen to use discussion as a method, you could implement this face-to-face, by teleconference, through a discussion forum or a chat room. If you want to show a video, you could do that in a classroom, online or on a mobile device. If you want to provide tutorial support, you could do this face-to-face, by telephone, by email or by instant messaging.

E-learning is a name for a broad collection of learning media, which have one thing in common, in that they all work through computing devices and networks. As such, e-learning is neither effective nor ineffective; it's just a channel. What you put through this channel is up to you.