{"id":502,"date":"2017-09-15T12:29:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T18:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/?p=502"},"modified":"2017-09-15T12:29:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T18:29:18","slug":"instructional-design-lessons-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/instructional-design-lessons-from-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Instructional design lessons from the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right now I’m taking a course called “Foundations of Learning and Technologies,” and we were asked to read two articles on the history of instructional design and technology, both by Robert Reiser. The first article<\/a> focused on instructional media<\/em>\u00a0and the second article<\/a> focused on instructional design<\/em>. This blog post is a reflection on these two articles.<\/p>\n

Relevancy<\/h3>\n

Both articles were written in 2001, and we were asked for our opinion on whether what the author writes about is still relevant today, 16 years later. Because Reiser writes about events that have already taken place, I would find it hard to say that history is no longer relevant. A better question might be whether his interpretation of history is accurate. It’s still too early in the course for me to provide an informed opinion on that question, but I expect I’ll be able to comment on Reiser’s historical interpretations after going through more readings. In any case, his account was certainly well-researched.<\/p>\n

Lessons from the Past<\/h3>\n

We were also asked to identify two “lessons from the past” that might apply to our work today. The general theme of the first article is that new technology seems to come out with great fanfare and promise of wonderful benefits… only to fail to live up to expectations, or be adopted much slower than anticipated. Looking forward, we might consider applying this lesson to m-learning (mobile learning) and virtual reality, both of which are hot topics right now.<\/p>\n

The second article showed how incremental developments in instructional design built upon one another to create several robust models for instructional design, and how the field continued to expand as workplace needs continued to evolve. Going forward, I can see how learning and development departments will continue to expand the scope of their responsibilities, as organizations increasingly rely on human capital (i.e., their workforce) to differentiate themselves from competitors.<\/p>\n

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Don’t fall prey to shiny object system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conflicting Lessons<\/h3>\n

Taking both articles together, it’s obvious instructional media has affected instructional design throughout history, but I would like to see instructional design influence instructional media, more than the other way around. (Sadly, Reiser’s articles suggest this will not be the case anytime soon.)<\/p>\n

I see instructional design as being a broader, more encompassing solution to learning and development problems faced by organizations, while technology may be only one small component of the solution.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many organizations identify training solutions like e-learning modules as the default solution, without first examining all the root causes of an issue and considering whether the technology proposed is actually the right solution. I sometimes call this shiny object syndrome, because fascination with new technology sometimes distracts people from their strategic objectives.<\/p>\n

I’m curious what “shiny objects” are currently being touted as the next great thing in workplace learning, and how instructional designers are responding. What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right now I’m taking a course called “Foundations of Learning and Technologies,” and we were asked to read two articles on the history of instructional design and technology, both by Robert Reiser. The first article focused on instructional media\u00a0and the second article focused on instructional design. This blog post is a reflection on these two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}