Defining the Field - Instructional Design and Technology

It seems that, like any human endeavor, this field of Instructional Design & Technology is constantly being redefined and redesigned. To begin with, it was simply seen as another tool and nothing more. Eventually, it was seen as a way of teaching rather than a tool. Now, it is starting to be seen more as what it should really be: a transformative movement that includes tools, media, methods, and people. For myself, I would have to say that Instructional Design and Technology is not something I use, but what I do. I don’t choose a technology and plan a lesson around it. I plan a lesson and then decide what technology would help me better present the lesson and the students to better learn the lesson and better perform their assignments within the lesson. So, my definition of Instructional Design and Technology would be something like:

Instructional Design and Technology is the practice of creating lessons and choosing the best tools to make the lesson as productive as it possibly can be with a given set of students. Those tools we choose from should include: computers, input tools, media of various types, methods of presentation, and other materials that are available for our use.

I redesigned the Dick, Carey and Carey instructional design model as a circular process with objectives at the center because that is the way we tend to work lessons and curriculum. Because our students are different every year, we cannot start with the students at the center without having to completely redesign the whole model and curriculum every year. Therefore, we start with what we want our students to know at the end of any given lesson or curriculum and then assess how much the students already know of those objectives and how they best learn. The elements included in the original model were only missing the implementation of instruction step. In my own experiences, the actual instruction is included as part of the design process because we have to implement the instruction in order to know if it is working with our students.



Throughout educational history, it seems that schools/educators have insisted on keeping the same techniques and applying new tools/media/technology to implement those techniques more easily or more efficiently without true regard for the real potential of new technologies. For example, in some schools, there is a trend among teachers to use the world wide web (WWW) for research only in the same form as they have always done, but with a digital format of the sources of information. I have met several teachers who insist that their students only use resources such as online formats of encyclopedias that are on the shelves of their libraries in paper format. Many of those same teachers do not teach students how to find and evaluate new online resources. Wikipedia is now a virtual curse word among English teachers who want their students to do research papers. Rather than teaching those students how to make use of Wikipedia as a starting point, many English teachers just outright ban Wikipedia and have even sent students to the office for even clicking on a Wikipedia link.

Where is technology in education going next? I hope, and plan to work to achieve, a transformation of the way we use all forms of technology in our schools. I will soon be a principal in k-12 schools and want to see my teachers making the best use of our available technology as they possibly can. One thing I am already planning for my own current classes is to use blogs and other forms of collaborative communication for my more advanced Spanish learners to interact with native Spanish speakers from the high school from which I graduated, in order to extend the skills that they have already mastered while helping those native Spanish speakers to improve their English skills. This will necessitate communication and discussion between myself and the teacher(s) at the other end of the connection so that it does not devolve into just another socializing time for the students. I can see more of the newer educators becoming more interested in such uses for the WWW in public education. I would also suggest that there will likely be more and more teachers who will record their lessons as either podcasts or vodcasts for their students to have extended access to the instruction. Recently, I read about a teacher who included a homebound student in his classes via Skype, so that the homebound student would be more connected to her classmates and not become lost in the shuffle of bureaucratic paperwork which often happens with students who are homebound.

In Higher Education, I can see the WWW becoming more and more integrated into teaching through multiple means, including delivery of instruction, new methods of instruction, and as a collaborative tool between students and between students and professors. Most of these activities are already taking place, but I would expect them to be put to even more extensive use. Eventually, it would even be likely that many of those students would be able to teach lessons and make presentations to their classes via real-time as well as asynchronous video share.

Adult Education is likely to become more and more commonly accomplished online. For example, many people are already involved in different forms of self-directed Adult Education on the WWW, such as Q&A sites and social networking sites. People sometimes visit these types of sites to ask questions about things that they are interested in. Many times, those questions spark discussions that lead into debates and even philosophical discussions. I can see such formats being used for many different types of Adult Education, including corporate training and GED-type courses. Eventually, education may be almost entirely online (in the far future), but in the meantime it will be up to us, today’s educators, to start the process that will make such changes happen.