The foundations and history of Instructional Technology during the 20th century is crucial to know in understanding where the field lies today in the 21st century. Until Thorndike in the 1920's suggested education have useful and measurable outcomes, the prevailing notion of education was that it exercised the mind. This move in ideology was pivotal to the blossoming field of Instructional Technology and seems to have paved the way for Skinner and other behaviorists later to enter the educational landscape to supply very measurable outcomes. By refocusing education on objective outcomes, the role of technology in the classroom began to take shape.
Probably no other time period, outside of the turn of the 21st century with the advent of the Internet and the wide acceptance of personal computing at home, was more influential on Instructional Technology than that of World War II. With a growing need for the U.S. government to quickly train troops for war, the government turned to educational technology to help facilitate the ease and haste it needed to train our troops. The use of audio and visual equipment to teach key concepts to our servicemen was instituted and produced other unexpected benefits. Not only did the U.S. government, and subsequently the U.S. Department of Education, see the benefit technology played in their goal, but it also highlighted the need for more money to be spent in Research and Development into various educational pedagogies/paradigms/technologies and the need for a separate role in the educational process—that of the Instructional Technologist. This last benefit really helped establish this profession as being a legitimate entity in education. That is, the separation of the content specialist with the technology specialist caused a third role to be required, a middle man who specialized in educational technology and the use of it in a classroom, the Instructional Technologist.
Today, our field is still evolving at an amazing rate. A technological explosion, especially as it relates to the common man, has occurred and its implications on education is still being sorted out. As technology has become more accepted than ever before, think of how many people had worked on a computer even 20 years ago as compared to today, the integration of this technology into the local classroom is still problematic. That is, today's classroom is still behind the wave of technology our students have come to accept as “normal.” In addition, the debate of whether Instructional Technology belongs under the umbrella of Education, or should be under its own umbrella, still has yet to be determined and rages on.
In order to be an Instructional Technologist, one has to have some technological skill and be familiar with useful applications in the classroom. In our class, we have had a hands-on approach to this pillar of the ETEC program. Not only has email and forum discussions been a primary source of communication, but we delved into actual website creation. In addition, we learned photo manipulation and explored our own technology skill of choice. The exploration of these technologies was more than simply becoming familiar with these skills; the use of these technologies mirrored the pedagogy of the ETEC program—utilizing technology to enhance the educational process. If our technology exercises were arbitrary, there would be an implied disconnect from the college classroom to our own classroom. Yet, our exercises were presented in way to show direct connection to the Instructional Technology field. For instance, the use of email and forums as a means of communication and learning is a tool we, as educators, can use now. Website creation for an extension of the classroom learning environment has immense potential, so we can take the skills we learned with how to code HTML and manipulate graphics and use them on our own classroom sites. In addition, the creation of a portfolio not only reinforced our website designing skills but created a tangible product of our journey through this Master's program. While this class did not focus on in depth exploration of these skills, as it was meant to provide an overview of some the technologies out there, it did offer exposure to the many technologies available, so we can research them further later.
Because Instructional Technology is still a relatively new field, exploring the various research paradigms is vital. In many ways, the classroom is an organic being with many different dynamics operating at any one time. Consequently, the traditional experiment research method might not always be the most advantageous for a given situation. That is, sometimes by focusing on qualitative results over quantitative results, we can see outcomes that might not have otherwise been discovered. Through our readings of Anglin's text, we were exposed to various research paradigms from the traditional experiment model to Technique Development. By embracing the use of various research paradigms, the Instructional Technologist can choose the paradigm that is most appropriate, and give the most relevant results, to a given situation. For instance, if I wanted to research why a particular program is not successful at a school, I might examine utilizing a case study approach to understand the perspectives of both the students and the teacher. This approach might yield far more accurate results than a quantitative study focusing on merely the program. In fact, it might even yield results that suggest the program has nothing to do with the poor performance but rather some external dynamic not thought of is causing the poor performance—like the implementation of the program or the feelings the students have towards the program.
The need for an Instructional Design process is self-evident. By providing a systematic approach to solving a problem, the Instructional Technologist is able to engage in a rigorous examination of each step used in solving a particular problem. The most traditional design process seems to be the ADDIE model. This model has a linear pattern that feeds into each next step. The “A” stands for Analysis. Before we even begin to tackle a problem and start our design to solve the problem, we must do a little background research. One area we focused on quite a bit in this class is the Needs Assessment, which helps our analysis of of the problem. A Needs Assessment helps to identify and flesh out the problem out in more detail. To begin our Needs Assessment, we must look at what is optimal performance. That is, if the problem to solve is why students at a particular high school perform so low on math benchmarks, we must first see what they should know. Once we know what the students should know, we turn to actual performance. If the freshmen students are expected to be able to solve quadratic equations by the end of their first semester and they can barely solve a single variable simple equation, then we now have a pulse on their actual performance compared to optimal performance. Armed with this information, we can start to look at the feelings involved in learning and teaching/learning quadratic equations from both the teachers and students. This, in turn, will help us to find some possible causes between the discrepancy of the optimal to actual performance. Once we've identified causes, we can start to look towards some solutions. This whole process helps the analysis process and gets us ready for the design process.
The “D” in the ADDIE model stands for design. This where the Instructional Technologist takes what s/he learned from the analysis, or Needs Assessment, and begins actually designing a program/solution to solve the problem. Once the design is in place, the next “D” occurs. After designing a solution, we need to develop it. The development stage moves from the theoretical to an actual product/service to address the problem. Once we develop a solution, we have to Implement it. After implementing it, we have Evaluate it. Ideally, when we evaluate the solution, we should see our linear process come full circle and see that it solved the problem we analyzed at the beginning.