The Delivery Truck Always Rings Twice: Revisiting Clark, Kozma, and the Limits of the Delivery Metaphor

Digital education reading group: April 2026

What difference, if any, does learning technology actually make?

The discussion begins with the influential argument made by Richard E. Clark (1983) that media will never influence learning. Reviewing decades of media comparison studies, Clark concluded that educational technologies function primarily as delivery vehicles for instruction. Learning outcomes, he argued, depend on instructional methods rather than the media used to deliver them. His well-known analogy compares educational media to delivery trucks: the truck transporting groceries does not change their nutritional value.

Clark’s argument was influential because it challenged recurring waves of technological enthusiasm in education. New media often arrive with promises of transformation. Clark’s review of the evidence suggested that such expectations are misplaced. What matters is the quality of the teaching method rather than the medium through which it is delivered.

The truck transporting groceries does not change their nutritional value.

Richard E. Clark

Yet Clark’s argument leaves us with some familiar puzzles.

If technologies make no difference, why do online courses rarely resemble simple digital versions of face to face teaching? Why do students often study differently in online environments? Why do learning platforms reshape how courses are organised, how teachers communicate with students and how assessment is designed? And why are universities once again reconsidering teaching and assessment practices in response to generative AI?

In this session we will revisit Clark’s argument alongside the response offered by Robert B. Kozma (1994), who argued that media may influence learning when their representational and processing capabilities interact with instructional methods and the cognitive demands of particular tasks

To broaden the discussion we will also read two short philosophical texts that approach technology from a different angle.

In Where Are the Missing Masses?, Bruno Latour (1992) explores how mundane artefacts such as speed bumps, hotel keys and door closers shape human behaviour by embedding expectations and constraints into material arrangements. Technologies do not determine outcomes, but they organise the conditions under which certain actions become easier, harder or more likely.

Similarly, Gilbert Simondon argues that technical objects cannot be understood simply in terms of their function or use. What appears to be a stable purpose is often the result of a much more complex process of development and organisation. Technical objects evolve, take on new roles, and derive their meaning within broader systems of use and interaction. In this sense, technologies help shape not just what we do, but how practices can be organised and sustained.

It is an illusory specificity to define a technical object by its practical end; no fixed structure corresponds to a given use.

Gilbert Simondon

Taken together, these perspectives raise an interesting possibility. Educational technologies may not change the cognitive mechanisms through which learning occurs. But they may still shape the environments within which teaching and learning practices develop. They influence what becomes easy to organise, what becomes difficult to sustain and what forms of interaction become routine.

The aim of this session is not to resolve the debate once and for all. Instead we will return to a classic argument and consider what it still helps us see, and what it might leave unexplained. At a time when digital platforms and AI systems are once again prompting questions about teaching and assessment, revisiting this debate may be particularly timely.

We’re looking forward to the conversation. Let us know if you have any questions or need help accessing the materials. 

Leonard

List of topics discussed at previous meetings