History of Instructional Technology

adapted from Instructional Technology: Past, Present, and Future, Gary Anglin ed., copyright 1995, published by Libraries Unlimited, CO

Instructional Technology -  A self-correcting, systems approach that seeks to apply scientifically derived principles to the planning, design, creation, implementation, and evaluation of effective and efficient instruction.

Keep the following reasonable tenets in mind:

1/ Technology is value free.
2/ The application of technological solutions to one problem may create other problems which may be more serious than the original problem.
3/ Applications of technology should be selected only after determining that desirable consequences outweigh undesirable ones.
4/ Fear and hesitancy about using technology is mainly a fear of unknown consequences. Teachers must pass through the stages of awareness, interest, trial, and appraisal before they will become comfortable with technology.

A Brief History

1920's - educational objectives, individualized instruction, self-paced, self-corrective workbooks, diagnostic placement tests, must careful design such instruction if its self-led as opposed to traditional, teacher led

1930's - objectives were written in terms of student behaviors and thus called "behavioral objectives", formative evaluation (evaluating instructional systems as they are administered) was recognized

1940's - thousands of soldiers had to be trained quickly, thousands of training films & instructors' manuals, military training drew well-funded research & development, instructional designers gained prestige (in addition to subject matter experts (SME) and media producer)

1950's - B.F. Skinner, programmed instruction (clear behavioral objectives, small frames of instruction, self-pacing, active learner response, immediate feedback), shifted focus from the teacher behavior and the educational process to the learners' specific behaviors, task analysis became more important then ever before, Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning

Behaviorism can be thought of as an opposite to constructivism!

1960's - Gagne & his analysis of learning objectives, criterion-referenced evaluation rather than norm-referenced, military used instructional systems development in standard training procedures

1970's - needs assessment was first used to determine what the objectives of an instructional system should be rather than assuming a set of objectives, cognitive psychology began to really merge with instructional design

1980's - personal computer (subverting gains in IT by "computerizing" instruction? or great potential?), instructional systems development by businesses

1990's and beyond -
1/ if technology is defined broadly then everyone is an instructional technologist
2/ large expenditures on technology while steadfastly keeping hold of teacher-centered traditional instruction (reluctance to move to student-centered learning)
3/ little effective research is done in IT because corporations, government and even academia pressure instructional technologists to produce (efficiently, inexpensively trained workers) rather than find answers to the field's questions
4/ thorough needs analysis and evaluation (formative and summative)  is avoided as taking too much time and money
5/ lack of proper budget for IT projects and tools, school districts locked into a structure of educating which is good at funding technology of industrial revolution (mass production, replaceable parts) but poor at accommodating modern technology (distance learning, individualized instruction, etc.)
6/ no real consensus between theories of learning (e.g. constructivism vs. behaviorism)
7/ education is not recognizing market & business' call for prepared workforce with technology skills and abilities

How to solve these problems?