What a travel through history of the field of instructional design and technology this week turned out to be!
As I read through Reiser's (2018) Chapter discussing instructional media and design from the early 1900s, I was really intrigued by Thomas Edison's quote from 1913, "books will soon be obsolete in the schools...Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years" (cited in Saetller, 1968, p. 98 in Reiser, 2018, p. 9). Even 100 years after this quote, I still feel our school systems weren't completely changed, however, due to the pandemic, I can finally see books becoming more obsolete in schools and the teacher reliance of various technology and media. I do think it's funny that even the factors for why tech and media didn't 'take off' successfully in schools are the same reasons 50 years later-teacher hesitation with change, not understanding equipment, limited quality content, and cost (Reiser, 2018). However, as mentioned, the pandemic thrust everyone toward online instruction, and in doing so, many schools and individuals alike turned to media and tech resources to aide in instruction making "these tools and technologies [have become] commonplace devices for individuals to share information and acquire new skills and knowledge" (Reiser, 2018, p. 12). I am seeing this heavily with my own pre-service students as they submit lessons plans filled with link to videos, power points, and even TeacherTube content.
One of the wonderful ideas to come from removing textbooks and turning to online resources are "massive open online courses" MOOCs (Bonk and Wiley, 2020). These course allow for accessible course content to everyone, including those not enrolled through a university. I really enjoyed reading how MOOCs came about in Preface: Reflections on the Waves of Emerging Learning Technologies (2020), as well as listening to stories from both professors about the changes and development of the field and their programs. A classmate from a different course even shared "The Monster Syllabus" recently and as I scrolled through it I thought, "Wow! Look at all of these free, accessible resources." But with all of these new, constant advances, and free-to-anyone resources, "it is becoming extremely difficult for educators and researchers to keep up" (Bonk & Wiley, 2020, p. 1600). This new age of education with global interaction and sharing are our current and future waves, what we do with our reflections from the information we gain along this journey will help shape what progress continues to be made and used in positive, life-changing ways.
Bonk, C. J., & Wiley, D. (2020). Preface: Reflections on the waves of emerging learning technology. Educational Technology Research and Development (ETR&D), 68(4), 1595-1612. DOI 10.1007/s11423-020-09809-x.
Reiser, R. A. (2018). A history of instructional design and technology. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology(4thed.) (pp. 8-22). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc
It is a new time for sure! Funny though, for the class I was teaching I provided all readings online for free, but our university came out this summer and wanted uniformity across classes and in doing so, required a textbook. So my students last year had no textbook, but this year they do. Perhaps a book over 800 pages is a little hefty to put online?
Hey Rebecca,
Nice summary of this week's readings. It's funny how I also noted the same idea that the same challenges limiting teacher's from adopting tech back then apply today as well. It's almost as if history continues to repeat itself. Also the notion that books may be completed absent in schools is definitely becoming more of a reality and to me it is quite disheartening. I may have read too many books such as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 that discuss how the government becomes tyrannical when books are removed, because it then leads them to have total control of information and misinformation. If all the literature is online, and there is a huge power outage across the country for…
Hi Rebecca,
I also have the same curiosity as yours as to why tech and media didn't 'take off' successfully in schools. You quoted Raiser’s article and listed a few reasons like teacher hesitation with change, not understanding equipment, limited quality content, and cost. I am persuaded by some of the reasons but have more questions about the rest, say, teacher hesitation with change. I think the question here is: Why didn’t these teacher want to change? Were they really a group of obsolete people? Or were there other reasons for their hesitation? I think this question is worth to discussing from many different angles such as user experience or science and technology studies, etc. Perhaps we can find more…
Rebecca,
I also found this week to be quite intriguing as we went on an adventure through history. Your comments about books being obsolete made me think of a conversation I had with my brother this summer as I was preparing for classes. Ten years ago, when I completed my undergraduate work, we were still heavily relying on books. I remember having to lug around three to four different engineering books for just one class. So naturally, I figured I would be carrying around a bunch of books for my classes this fall. When talking with my brother regarding how I should prepare for classes, he recently completed his master’s degree, and he had to break the news to m…