Week 5: Current Issues & New Directions

1. Section VIII addresses new directions and emerging technologies for IDT. Select three of the following and reflect on how you might apply them in your current or future position in the IDT field:

                                                                         Photos courtesy of Photobucket.com

Distributed or e-learning environments

Since e-learning has become a broad concept that includes all learning using technology, then I have a lot of room to work.  In my Pre-AP geometry classes, I am going to use Edmodo to create an online environment where students will blog about geometry.  The concept of writing about any subject is a higher learning skill that pays great dividends.  It’s almost like teaching a subject when you write about it.  Next year our school will have Wi-Fi for all classrooms.  Students will be able to use their phones with a different assortment of apps to make learning more interesting.  One app can be using their phone for clickers to answer multiple choice problems.  Other apps actually allow you to write sentences to respond to questioning.  How much do you think students would like to use their cell phones in class?  They worship the cell phone as it is.  

Rich media

I have been creating powerpoints with rich visual media for some time now.  I have learned much about how students can use visual representations to help them learn.  My parents were deaf so I grew up with communication being visual  instead of auditory.  American Sign Language is a conceptual language where you paint a picture more than you use a string of words.  Think of a rectangle about the size of 2ft by 3ft in front of you.  To construct an image for communication everything needs to be placed in the correct location like a canvas for painting.  This circumstance that I was born in has helped me greatly in my teaching.  I try to be very visual with gestures, movement, and models.  I am always bringing something to class to show how some geometric concept works, or looks like.  I have been able to create powerpoints for tough lessons that have eased the burden on new teachers.  I have found that nice bright color and color coding techniques brings commands more attention.  I use movement, and video, and auditory bells and whistles to keep attention.  I have found that when showing how to work problems, there needs to be very few words or clutter to distract students.  Complex problems using geometric visuals are made easy by using objects that move and change color when it is necessary to discuss a property or concept.  I have also found it beneficial to use comparisons of problem types side by side so students can see the similarities and differences.  If a teacher is just working off of an ELMO document writer.  It takes time and effort to recreate or color code documents that are available in my powerpoints in just a click of the mouse.  I know that powerpoints, lend to too much lecture.  However, if they are used sparingly for complex lesson development, then students can problem-solve, and do activities either before or after a powerpoint.  I love to create hyperlinks to helpful websites.  For example, an animation showing how a three-dimensional shape will break down into a two-dimensional net.  With your mouse, you can move the net or shape around to help students to see how it all works.  Math can be a bit dry so interesting oddities, humor, inspirational concepts, and teenager experiences can be built into a powerpoint or any lesson to make it more interesting. 

Digital games or Simulations

Next year I will be reserving laptops for using a program called Study Island.  I can set up questions based on objectives for students to work.  If they master the objective, they can play an online game.   Students love this program.  They can also use this program at home to earn extra credit in my classroom.  If I was involved in instructional design, I would love to create games that helped students to use geometric concepts in authentic situations to build things, like buildings, or design intricate machinery for certain purposes from different fields like engineering, science, or computer science.  I would like the program to be large enough where teams from my classroom would work with teams from the other Mesquite ISD schools to collaborate to build something, or at the very least, work on geometric proofs.  This would be very much like the virtual teaming you see in business today. 

What learning goals or objectives could the technologies you selected help learners foster?

Using Edmodo to create blogs for my geometry class will help them to synthesize geometric topics and concepts.  Writing about a subject is akin to teaching the subject and has a multitude of higher-level thinking skills attached to it.  As for students using phones in the classroom, the interest created will help students to be more engaged in the learning process.  Engaged learners are always a goal for any teacher.  Study Island is a program where students answer questions about an objective and if they master the objective, they can play different online games.  Once again, student engagement is at a premium when using Study Island.  Learning can also happen from a student’s home computer as well.  Visuals have been proven to help learning.  Powerpoints using rich media concepts of color, video, audio, and movement will helps students to learn.  Blooms taxonomy type comparisons in visual form also allow students to improve higher order thinking skills by discerning the similarities and differences in a visual subject like geometry.  

Could the technology facilitate attainment of that learning goal better than traditional instruction? Why or why not?

I think that each example that I talked about above would help better than traditional instruction.  Visuals have been proven to improve student learning.  So my multifaceted powerpoints have helped instruction.  I’ve been teaching for fifteen years and I can see the difference between chalkboard lessons from the past and the ones that I am doing now and I can see the ease of learners to learn with visuals.  Also, I have always known writing to improve a student’s understanding of geometric concepts.  I can obviously imagine how writing blogs can help the student even more since I am writing a blog right now.  I know that blogging has helped me to synthesize the knowledge of this book in a much greater capacity than if I had just read the book and answered some questions.  I have also described how interest helps learners to be engaged.  Study Island helps work problems using technology and an interesting reward system.  Students want to play those games so they work hard on the problems.

2. Section IX focuses on issues related to instructional design, rather than new technologies: professional ethics, diversity and accessibility, the nature of design, and providing instructional guidance. For each of the technologies you selected above, discuss what ethical issues using the technology might present.

Blogging on Edmodo is something that is already done within the district.  Many 

securities are already built into the software.  I would need to make sure that 
permission slips from parents are signed for each student.  Another issue is 
making sure all students have access to a computer.  Pre-AP kids almost all 
have some kind of access.  We also have school computers in the library and 
my computer in my room could be used after school as well.  Study Island is a 
program that has been provided by the district so many of the ethical questions 
have been answered already. Using Wi-Fi in the room with students cell 
phones is also district mandated.  However, the question once again is access 
by all students.  Not everyone has a cell phone, even though most do. 

Does the technology enhance accessibility and accommodate diverse learning needs?

Enriched powerpoints using rich media enhance visual and auditory learners.  Powerpoint accessibility is a given since it’s for all students.  Blogging, or writing is a higher-order skill that benefits all types of leaners.  Accessibility may be a question to be answered about blogging.  I’m not sure if all students have access to computers in my Pre-AP class.  Study Island enhances engagement but I’m not sure if it helps with diverse learners.  The questions are not only drill-and-practice but problem-solving type questions as well so the level is higher order but helping diverse learners, I am not sure.  Accessibility is not a question for Study Island since we bring in laptops for all students to use.

How and/or can you design instruction using that technology?

Most of the instruction has been created for each technology I have discussed.  Higher order blogging questions will need to be created that bring out thoughtful answers.  Rubrics would need to be created to give fair evaluation.  Cell phone apps to be used in the district are already being created.  I will have the ability to make the apps cater to my classroom.  Study Island is already created.

How much guidance would instruction with that technology require?  What kinds of guidance would be necessary?

Once you lead students through the logging in process on laptops it is pretty simple to access the Study Island website and get started.  Instruction for Study Island is something that I would have to prepare within the website by choosing questions from the objectives that mirror our curriculum.  Powerpoints are not in the hands of students so instruction is obviously not required.  I have not seen all the apps that will be used for cell phones next year so there will be a learning process concerning instruction for use.  Students are magnificent on their phones so I am sure they will know more about it than me before it is all over with.  They will help each other to set up and work the apps, I am sure.  How to bring fruitful instruction with the cell phone apps will be a work in progress.

Week 4: Issues and Issues in IDT

1. Chapters in Section V identify trends and issues in IDT in various contexts: business & industry; military; health care education; P-12 education; and post-secondary education. Select at least 3 of these 5 contexts and compare/contrast the IDT trends and issues.

Business & Industry

Trends

One trend in the corporate world for IDT, is the trend toward having only one designer for the company.  The latest economic downturn limited IDT budgets for corporations.  The result is many companies only have one designer who may have to be the project manager as well.  The designer/project manager's role will be to design, develop, assess, formative evaluation implementation and revision.  There will typically be a subject-matter expert hired to provide content to the designer.  The designer might outsource for a video crew, photographer or artist during the production phase. 

A trend in large scale business IDT projects is requiring teams of designers to become virtual teams instead of everyone working in the same location.  Organizations are sprawled all over the world and it is impossible to house everyone under one roof.  Virtual teams use electronic communication means such as Skype, I-Chat, Google Docs, Adobe Connect and Microsoft’s Net Meeting to conduct meetings.

Another trend is that large companies are outsourcing their IDT work, so these designers are now becoming project managers that manage these contractors. 

Cultural factors are increasingly involved in ID projects.  Designers are responsible for identifying societal cultural factors such as generational factors or traditions and values.  Translators and cultural experts are needed to work through issues.  Cultural factors of learners are important as well.  Designers need to know the culture of these learners to make good design decisions.  One trend is to extract the culture from international projects and adding culture to the local design process.

Many companies are espousing the phrase, “better, faster, cheaper” concerning design processes in business and industry.  Rapid prototyping is increasingly important. Prototypes reduce production time because revisions are less necessary.  Technology training delivery techniques like web training, or two way real time communication are allowing for more productive ways to complete IDT programs globally.  Advanced evaluation techniques are now becoming prevalent.  Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method is one of the advanced evaluation techniques helping designers to complete the complex evaluations necessary for good ID.  The designer is more and more becoming an expert researcher and problem solver.  All of these ideas are making design, better, faster, and cheaper.

Issues

One issue for IDT is the issue of discerning from multiple clients who your primary decision makers are going to be.  One client could be funding the project and another client could the manager of the department with the performance issue.  There could also be a project manager.  This leads to confusing situations about who owns the power of decisions.

Three issues or constraints that impact the design process are:  context constraints, designer-related issues, and project management versus instructional design.

1.  Context constraints could consist of:

     A.  Time and resources constraints consist of lack of enough time, lack of 
           client support, and lack of money to perform ID projects.  

     B.  Locus of control for decision making is impaired by the many decisions 
           made before entering into a design project.          

     C.  Finally, tools and techniques designers face problems with ID models 
           that are untested and may give accurate information.  This slows the 
           process as designers conduct validation studies for their tools and 
           models.

2.  Designer-related constraints consist of:        

     A.  Perceived necessity describes how many corporations do not see the 
           need for certain tests and activities like follow-up evaluations and 
           task analysis.

     B.  Philosophical Beliefs are usually well known for the designer.  They 
           know whether they are Pragmatist, Modernists, or any other philosophy 
           of education.  Companies need to decide which philosophies they 
           believe in or there will be conflict when creating ID projects. 

     C.  Expertise matters for the designer.  Studies have shown that expert 
           designers usually have ten or more years of experience.  Inexperienced                
           designers may not be able to do a good job for business and industry.

3.  Since the instructional designer often is the project manager, as the 
     project unwinds, he faces the dilemma of whether he needs to design 
     activities or management activities.  If he chooses one over the other, 
     the other suffers.  Large projects there is usually someone to take the 
     project manager’s job so that the designer can focus on design.             

Medicine

Trends and Issues

            In the 60’s and 70’s, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) began to overtake the method of applying knowledge after you have already received the knowledge.  PBL uses a case method for learning methodology.  Cases would get medical learners to work across multiple fields to find solutions.  Also, if learners lacked knowledge, they could research areas where they lacked knowledge.  These self-study skills would help them over the years to diagnose and solve medical problems.  The PBL curricula created clinical learning situations outside of the hospital.  Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is an offshoot of PBL.  EBM formulates clinical questions and  learners have to go and find the answers in medical literature.  The hope is that learners will continue to do this kind of problem solving throughout their careers. 

The medical field presents unique challenges for instructional design.  There are so many areas that are considered inside the medical profession, from doctors, researchers, medical boards, to veterinarians.  The medical field has high risk because information might be a matter of life and death.  Unique sensory situations like listening to breathing, a heartbeat,  and perfect imagery for diagnosis requires strong tools and education to use those tools. 

Multimedia and simulations are used heavily in the medical field.  There are case-based problem simulations that require students to look at a case and pick a diagnosis.  Electronic mannequins are also used in simulations for students to work with.  The third kind of simulation is a trained person simulating a patient helps learners with their interpersonal skills.

Significant Issues Affecting Performance and Education in the Medical Field

1.  Medical knowledge bases improve rapidly and the access of this knowledge is a perfect fit for informational technology.  Subscriptions to massive medical databases have improved accessibility for students because costs were not based on an item per item search anymore.  However, standards are needed in this Web 2.0 environment where anyone can put out an opinion. 

2.  Costs are a major issue in the medical field.  Faculty members, who teach, are increasingly expected to see more patients and teach less because of rising costs.  IT and managed care seem to be good options for lowering costs.  IT can lower the cost and burden of teaching.  Managed care professionals believe that education and information for patients and learners will drive down costs as well.

3.  Regulations, licensure, and standards affect the medical field as well.  Many standards and regulations dictate what is to be learned and affects the design process.  The PBL movement has started efforts toward making licensure exams and clinical questioning to be congruent.

4.  Converging technologies are allowing students to use different technologies to do their research and work on problems.  Online databases are easily accessed and links are provided for the search of other medical databases from the same location.  Students are working together online in separate places using internet technologies.  Patient’s records are starting to be linked with medical databases so diagnosis can be made.  Convergence of technology improves performance as more programs and multimedia applications are interlaced. 

Education K-12

ID for school systems is usually associated with the design, management, and development of professional development and training for teachers and administrators.  Another area for ID is the integration of new technology into the classroom.  Technology might include graphing calculators, videos, educational software, print materials, interactive whiteboards, and student response systems like clickers.  ID can be broken down into three areas:  Systems ID, Product ID and Classroom ID. 

1.  System ID- is looking for profit with large scale curriculum 
     development or redevelopment.  Systems development creates
     computer-assisted instruction (CAI) into integrated learning 
     systems (ILS).  The package is usually complete with tools to    

     help students to find out what there learning needs are. 

2.  Product ID-  creates online, self-paced learning materials.  
     Product development has computer-based instructional (CBI) 
     products.  Gaming and educational software are the most 
     prevalent CBI products.  CBI hopes to replace the teacher or 
     give the teacher time to help other students while students 
     work on drill and practice software.  CBI is also good for 
     remedial instruction for lower-achieving students.

3.  Classroom ID- modifies and creates curriculum for teacher 
     led classrooms such as lessons, and evaluations.    

Table 21.1  Types of ID development by technology integration examples
Types of ID Development (Gustafson & Branch, 2002)	Technology Integration Examples
Systems	Integrated Learning Systems
Product	Computer-Based Learning ·         Tutorials ·         Drill and Practice ·         Educational Games ·         Educational Simulation
Classroom	Technology Integration Models ·         ASSURE (Smaldino et al., 2008) ·         NTeQ (Morrison & Lowther, 2010)
Reiser, R. A & Dempsey J. V. (2012).  Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. Pearson. (p.209)

K-12 Educational Trends and Issues

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has mandated some of the ID trends for K-12 education.  Districts are to implement proven technology strategies into curriculum and instruction.  Also, staff development must be high quality.  Districts are also supposed to evaluate what creates student achievement and teacher performance.  Different states are using different ID products to meet these standards including Formative Evaluation Process for School Improvement Technology Package.  Ed-Tech classrooms have been proven with the new technologies to have improved student achievement and interest.  However, student gains have not proven to raise high-stakes test scores.  Technology has not been integrated as much as was hoped.  Education ranks very low when compared to the integration of technology into other industries.  Results are sketchy for technology where there are some areas of improvement and many outcomes that are not.  The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills is a group of business trying to identify key skills needed for students to achieve in their following careers.  The 21^st skills described as :  Core subjects as defined by NCLB, 21^st century content including global awareness and abilities in financial, economic, entrepreneurial literacy, civic, and health awareness, learning and thinking skills involving critical thinking and problem-solving, information and technology literacy, along with life skills.  These skills are supposed to integrated into the new curriculums not added to end of the curriculums. 

Comparing Business and Industry, the Medical Field, and K-12 Education

	Business and Industry	Medical	K-12 Education
Trends	·         Downsizing because of Economic issues ·         One designer doing multiple tasks ·         Globalization creating multicultural emphasis ·         Globalization creating Virtual Teams ·         Outsourcing ·         Better, Cheaper, Faster     Rapid Prototyping	·         Medical Knowledge Base Growing Rapidly ·         Convergence ·         Linked Online Data Bases ·         Managed Care	·         Technology Government mandated ·         Professional Development ·         Technology Integration into  Classroom ·         Finally Implementing Tech
Issues	·         Costs ·         Context constraints ·         Designer Constraints ·         Diffused Power ·         Web Training Delivery Methods ·         Complex Evaluation Models needed	·         Costs ·         Broad Spectrum of Businesses ·         Time Factors for Faculty ·         High Risk ·         Regulations and Standards ·         Licensure ·         Sensory solutions needed	·         Costs ·         Technology slow to be implemented ·         Mixed Results ·         Evaluation for student achievement and teacher performance needed ·         What works and why
Major ID Models & Methods	·         Stufflebeam’s CIPP Evaluation Model ·         Rossi’s Five Domain Evaluation Model ·         Kirkpatrick’s Training Evaluation Model ·         Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method ·         Patton’s Utilization–Focused Evaluation ·         HPI ·         HPT	·         PBL Case Methodology ·         EBM Evidence Based Medicine ·         MultiMedia and Simulations       Electronic Mannequins ·         Linked online databases	·         Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) ·         Computer-Based Instruction (CBI) ·         NTeQ ·         ASSURE ·         Student Response Systems ·         Drill and Practice ·         Gaming ·         Simulation
Future	·         Globalization ·         Multicultural Factors ·         More High Performance Improvement ·         Better Evaluation ·         Management Issues	·         Convergence of multiple technologies ·         Better Evaluation ·         IDT to replace teaching when possible ·         Easy Access to Information	·         21st Century Skills ·         Higher-Level Questioning Design Techniques ·         Better Evaluation of ID ·         Finding out what works in Tech

  

Then explain how they are similar or different from the IDT trends and issues in the context in which you work.

Obviously, the K-12 factors affect me the most since I am a teacher in the industry.  Our school is following government mandates to bring our technology up to date with the rest of society.  We have a technology plan and have to answer questionnaires for the state of Texas every year to show our progress in integrating technology into our school and the classroom.  I am using several technologies in my classroom.  I use an interwrite pad, projector, computer, graphing calculators, clickers, an ELMO, and blogging.  We can reserve laptops to bring into our room and use a program called Study Island.  With Study Island, I can create geometry questions from a database online to supplement my curriculum for students.  The program is great because students are rewarded for mastering an objective by getting their choice from a variety of games to play when achieving mastery.  Our school has a Moodle.  Our school also has a grade book program where parents can look at their child’s grades called Parentconnect.  Eduphoria is a program that allows us to integrate several programs.  One is to check standardized tests scores, another is to see your PDAS evaluations, another gives us special education accomodations, and we can also see a district created scope and sequence, lesson plans for the year, and notes, homework, projects and quizzes for each day.  We have hired a couple of technology advisors who can come out and help you with the implementation of new technologies into the classroom.  Comparing our industry to others is hard to do.  We compare similarly to other industries since our evaluation process of our ID is poor.  Costs are of the utmost importance just like other industries.  Education is different because so much has been mandated by NCLB.  Teacher buy in is a problem with technology.  Many are averse to change.  I’m sure this compares to the corporate world as well.    

2. Chapters in Section VI discuss global trends and issues in IDT. As the world’s population grows exponentially, we face unprecedented challenges that have implications for learning. How and can we prepare our youth to address the problems of living in a world with 9 billion people when the earth’s resources cannot sustain that many?

Global education, within the context of instructional design, is the key to meeting the global challenges we face.  We need to continue to integrate technological education systems allowing more areas and countries to get the education they need to meet the challenges of a complex world.  However, people are going to be very important when dealing with countries that are under educated and under resourced.  Trainers must get the information they need to train teachers in these countries.  Whatever learning techniques we decide upon we need to agree that our learning perspective needs to be that of a life-long process of learning.  With this perspective we can create learning and learning opportunities that will continue to be open-ended and used throughout our lives.  We must stop thinking that we have to use the newest and latest tools for instruction especially in resource-poor areas.  We need to be creative about using what is available to help instruction.  In creating instruction, we need to be aware of the culture of the area we are in and we also need to listen carefully so that we can collaborate on the instructional process.  Collaboration always increases our ability to solve complex problems within instruction and outside of instruction.  We also need to keep ourselves aware of rich, informal learning contexts that can work with the formal contexts that are already available.         

Does our current education system, curriculum, and instructional practices help learners foster the complex problem-solving skills necessary to tackle these issues?

One problem that our system has is that it is too focused on standardized tests.  Curriculums are becoming void of the social aspect of education that helps to create the whole student who is more able to solve the complex problems that our world faces.  Also, standardized tests force a more behaviorist curriculum that does not allow for discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, and projects because of time constraints in meeting the mandated curriculum we have now.  Teachers are heading toward more problem-based learning situations but they are too few and far between.  We are also heading toward more authentic learning situations based on real-life experiences but again, the curriculum only affords so much time.  The behaviorist curriculum also lead to a robotic classroom where learners are bored and don’t invest in the learning process.  Technology is becoming more prevalent and students like well thought out technology situations but teachers are sometimes resistant to change and resistant to the process of failing before achieving eventually achieving in technology situations.    

  

Are there methods and practices used in European and Asian countries that we should use here in the US? Why or why not? 

We have benefited from some of the “We-ism” versus “Me-ism” concept where in Japan, the group is more important than the whole.  However, as far as instructional design is concerned, Japan has not really incorporated ID into their country.  E-Learning became popular in Japan but the ID that would help systems to be evaluated more critically and produce better products has not been important. Even ROI has not been important to the Japanese.  Training in Japan has been more based on the trainer’s experience instead of a systematic approach to evaluation.  However, I would not be surprised that in the future Japan adopts more of the ID process as time goes on.  It’s still early.  However, in education, we could learn from the creative process for teachers known as lesson study.  Teachers are basically instructional designers in their own classrooms.  In our school, I create curriculum for geometry since I have been basically an instructional designer in my classroom since I was thrown in with a book and told to teach.  Mandated curriculums, or curriculums bought from other sources have taken away the struggle that I believe teachers need to go through to develop their class.

Korea is different than Japan but is still young in the process of IDT.  Cultural conflicts need to be addressed in IDT since Koreans still hold dear the concept of teacher, lecture, and face-to-face contact.  At the university students prefer face-to-face communication instead of streaming video lectures that are impersonal.  Most of the IDT focus in Korea is based on general IDT theories and models, little is focused on context-specific developmental research.  If IDT is to be fully realized in Korea, research will be necessary.