Foundations of the Tech Field

For the second half of the week I chose three different articles in hopes to familiarize myself with the Instructional Technology field a bit more. I was happy with the articles I chose, "What Field Did You Say You In?"(Reiser), "Theoretical Foundations"(Spector), and "Flexible Learning in a Digital World"(Collis & Moonen).

Since R511 and R711 are my first two IST courses (taking both this fall), I thought it would be good to read Reiser's article to figure out what exactly I got myself into ;) I enjoyed the history of the instructional technology terminology and definitions. Through each definition, you could see the evolvement of not only technology, but also pedagogy practices. Having instructional tech include the 'process' now is an important attribute for learners and educators. One of my biggest questions is, how many more times has the definition of instructional technology changed since this article was written, 15 years ago? I would be interested in comparing the 'recent' definition from the article to our current definition, with all of the tech and media advancements, not to mention pandemic practices, that have changed our instructional systems.

Moving to Spector's article, I was interested in the theories surrounding this field, plus one of our guest speakers mentioned working with Spector, so thought that was a good connection. I really appreciated how this article was set up, and was hooked with one of the first sentences, "a fundamental aspect of educational communications and technology is change." How progressive and ever-evolving! I feel educators often get stuck in ruts, they find something that works for them and never change/adapt/evolve with the times or their students. Something that caught my eye was a section about educational technologists focusing on improving learning and performance, but I couldn't help but wonder about interaction, as well? Sometimes I feel with more tech components, the less interaction and human engagement occurs, so why wouldn't interaction be of focus, too? The closing of the article was a refreshing view of never being done with the ever-changing technologies, processes, research that awaits.

Lastly, I read Collis and Moonen's article about Flexible Learning, which, after I started reading, I realized I did not have a full understanding of to begin with. I really like to concept of Flexible Learning and actually related a lot of it to this course. We have the flexibility for readings, for due dates, for tasks-there is so much choice! It's really nice! As I read through the article, I began thinking of ways I could incorporate Flexible Learning into my own courses, to allow for not only the freedom of choice, but the engagement and experiential learning that comes with it!

Although I didn't necessarily find an over-arching theme across all three articles, I believe they all brought value to the beginning of my IST journey!

Collis, B., & Moonen, J. (2002). Flexible learning in a digital world. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 17(2). 217-230.

Reiser, R. A. (2018). What field did you say you were in? Defining and naming our field. In R.A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 1-7). New York, NY: Pearson Education.

Spector, M. (2008). Theoretical foundations. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. V. Merriënboer, & M. P. Driscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 21-28). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.