Educational
technology and design is a relatively new field of practice when we consider
the history of human learning. It marks a major shift from traditional means of
instruction passing knowledge from elders to youth through stories, or
classroom instruction from a teacher to students. This paper will provide a
brief narrative of the short history of educational technology and design
identifying major milestones as well as foundational principles that drive the
field of instructional technology and design today.
 |
| Stereograph, circa late-1800s |
While photographs and stereographs have been used since
the late-1800s in classroom instruction, it is Robert Reiser’s claim in “A
History of Instructional Design and Technology Part 1” that the motion picture
projector was one of the first media devices to be used in a classroom. In
1910, the first catalog was published that provided teachers with instructional
films that could be selected for the purpose of supplementing curriculum. For
many years, the field of education would see technology only as a supplement to
the primary means of instruction, that is teachers and textbooks. Museums, with
their collections of films, slides, and photographs as well as traveling
exhibits, would also be used to supplement primary instructional means.
Advances in radio broadcasting and
sound recording piqued more interest in the use of technology in instruction
during the 1920s and 1930s. This time period witnessed the merging of three
professional training associations in 1932 into a larger National Education Association,
which is now known as Association for Educational Communications and Technology
(AECT). Despite the interest in film and radio for instructional purposes, it
was not until World War II that educational technology and design had its
biggest spark to life.
Necessity
Breeds Creativity
The United States of America faced a
desperate need to train millions of men and women to serve in the U.S. military
and private industry. The U.S. was in the middle of an economic depression and
its military was not large enough to be an influencing factor in the early
years of the war. However, with the use of instructional films by both the U.S.
military and by factories around the nation, millions of people were able to
receive consistent, on-demand training. The U.S. Army Air Corps., for example,
commissioned over 1000 films and filmstrips that provided over 4 million
viewings. Training films provide the advantage of being able to deliver the
same material consistently without concern for instructor fatigue or burnout.
When the film is worn out, it can be simply replaced by a duplicate copy or an
updated version. Other technology used included sound recordings for linguists,
photographs for enemy recognition, and simulators for tank and flight training.
The end result of the efforts to use technology in war-time training was
overwhelming victory. According to my own experiences in the U.S. Army from
1999-2003, many of these technologies are still used today.
World War II also spurred on something never before
seen in the field of education, a systematic approach to how instructional
programs are assessed, designed, developed, implemented, and evaluated (Hey!
It’s the ADDIE model!) Psychologists were called in to create a screening
device and determine which service members were most likely to benefit from
particular training programs. While this practice was focused on selecting the
right students for fixed programs, B.F. Skinner in the 1950s describes a process
to deliver instruction that was effective for its audiences. The focus was shifted
onto the design of the program rather than the entry-level capabilities of its
students. In his book, The Science of
Learning and the Art of Teaching, Skinner describes requirements for
increasing human learning and creating effective instructional materials.
Program instruction would include increments of instruction that required
frequent questions and feedback so that students would gain confidence and
increased learning through a process of immediate positive reinforcement and
feedback. This was a more empirical approach to providing training.
The launching of Sputnik into orbit by the Soviet
Union in 1957 also provided a boost to deliver systematically designed training
curriculum at a faster pace. By 1967, Michael Scriven saw that training would
be more timely and effective if evaluation, feedback and adjustments were
available while a program was in development rather than the current practice
of waiting until the program was in its final product stage (summative
evaluation). This process of a rolling start to a programmed instruction would
be known as formative evaluation and a program going through such an evaluation
would be said to be in its formative stages. Formative evaluation would prove
to be more cost effective and efficient compared to summative evaluation in
regards to time and other resources.
Improving
on What Works
Also, in this time period, there was a shift from “norm-referenced”
testing where individuals were ranked among their peers in a group to “criterion-referenced”
testing which was permitted because of the acceptance of such practices as
identifying specific training objectives using behavioral terms, a practice
recognized by Robert Mager in the 1960s. Robert Glaser stated that
criterion-referenced testing could be used for two purposes, assessing a
student’s entry level behavior and determining the acquired behaviors from an
instructional program. Criterion-referenced testing has become a central feature
to instructional design.
To continue the pattern that would suggest that we
should all name our children Robert, Robert Gagne published The Condition of Learning in 1965 where
he describes five domains of learning outcomes which include the following:
verbal information, intellectual skills, psychomotor skills, attitudes, and
cognitive strategies. Each of these desired outcomes required a different set
of conditions for learning. Gagne also discussed hierarchical analysis where
each skill learned required the learning of some subordinate skill. This
suggested that there is a logical progression to learning new concepts and
skills, and that instructional design needs to consider instructional task
analysis to identify subordinate skills. Hierarchical analysis is a key feature
to many instructional design models.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a focus on a systems
approach to instructional design was easier to consider as more and more
theories on learning and communication were developed from the 1960s. With over
40 models of instructional design already developed in the 1970s, the United
States also saw the development of graduate programs in the field. The 1980s
saw more applications of cognitive psychology as well as microcomputers which
were initially used for skills training.
The 1990s were a time when constructivism was
gaining ground, and many of the additions to the field of instructional design
included non-instructional solutions such as incentive systems and work
environment considerations. In constructivism, there is apparent need to
provide “authentic” learning tasks where groups of people collaborate to solve
complex problems. This allows students to take ownership of their knowledge. Today,
the internet now provides learners with quick, paperless collaboration tools
that can synchronize a group’s efforts and increase the speed of learning as
groups do not need to spend time to travel to a collective location to work
together.
As mobile connectivity technology such as
smartphones, tablet personal computers, e-readers, and laptop computers becomes
readily available for more and more people globally, this is a great
opportunity to find ways to apply this technology to provide educational
solutions to the world applying the principles discussed in this paper with
discoveries made with the popular use of these technologies.
