New Directions in IDT

Rich-media definitely has benefits and draw-backs. Benefits: makes for a more rounded presentation of information, allows learners with different styles to access the same information, takes into account some physical limitations. Draw-backs: can be distracting, make for a slower loading page/lesson/module, etc, can tempt learners to skip the main text and just focus on the rich part of the media. For those of us with ADD/ADHD, it can completely throw us off our stride in studying. For example: a few years ago, I was working through a rich-media presentation that included a lot of interactive images and animations. Unfortunately, I never finished that training because I spent all my time clicking on the interactive elements and seeing just what they would do and how they would react to different actions on my part.

Because I have spent so much time teaching languages, I automatically saw benefits of rich-media and virtual worlds. Then, I thought of a way to combine the two for even better effectiveness. I would love to create a MUVE for a Spanish class (and, maybe another for an ESL class) where students can become participants in a world where they have to develop their language skills in the new language in order to advance in the world. For example, a Second Life type world where beginners would be recognizable as beginners and would therefore be presented with images and printed words whenever another person spoke in the target language. Then, as they improved their language skills, they would earn credits that would allow them to change their virtual appearance to match their newer skills. Eventually, they would be able to appear, in the MUVE, as native speakers of the language. At that point, they could choose to move on to a commercial platform where they would be able to continue to practice their new skills so as to not regress. Or, they could choose to move on to the real world and apply their skills in face-to-face situations.

At the same time, I would need to make sure that there were some sort of built-in safeguards that would keep students who are easily distracted from wasting their time playing around, uselessly, with the interactive features. Perhaps there could be a roving “sheriff” who would occasionally “test” a student’s progress and remind them that they need to make good use of their time. Not entirely sure how to make this part of the equation happen. But, I will continue looking into it.

Reiser, Robert V.; Dempsey, John V.. Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (3rd Edition). Pearson HE, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Informal discussions with students about types of new learning environments they would like to see implemented.

Getting and Improving in the Job

I am currently enrolled in the Education Technology Leadership program because I felt that it would afford me the best range of options for moving out of the classroom and into an area that was more directly related to the technology that I so enjoy working with. Once I graduate, I hope to be able to move into a field where I will work more with technology and professionals instead of being in the classroom with high school students. I love them, but the older I get, the less I seem to understand them. And, I have always been more comfortable around people who were at least middle aged. So, not entirely sure how I ended up teaching elementary and secondary students.

Reflect on where you are.

I have taught for over 15 years in public schools and one university. But, currently, I am not working.

Where do you want to go?

After reviewing multiple options in and out of the educational sector, I am inclined toward technology or network training in industry or medicine. As I mentioned previously, I have always been fascinated with medicine and the research therein.

What do you need to learn or do to get there?

One thing that I need to do is to begin networking with those I know in the field I want to join. I will make my first foray into that shortly by visiting with a particular technologist at an area hospital, possibly even offering to do a bit of volunteer work for him so that I can demonstrate that I do have sufficient skills to move into that area.

I have visited with a network engineer I know at an area hospital and delved into some of what will be necessary to make the switch of careers. The first thing he mentioned was that I should work on getting certain certifications. Among those are: Microsoft and Adobe certifications.

I may also need to consider making a change-over to a couple of Info Tech courses for next semester, so as to be able to have that training on my resume. It seems that there is a large element in this nation, much like in Europe, that believe that anything from education cannot be useful anywhere else. So, it may well behoove me to at least pick up a couple of courses in an area that is perceived as more related.

What kind of work do you want to do and in what type of organization or institution?

Teaching doctors and nurses to improve their performance through technology would be my dream job. As I would love to work in a medical facility such as a hospital, I know that I would need to develop a better understanding of exactly what areas of medical work need to be streamlined and what types of things are pretty much set in stone. For example, there are standard formats for reporting information which cannot necessarily be changed. But, the way in which that information is entered into the reporting system could likely be improved. My strengths have always been in the areas of figuring out new and better ways of accomplishing tasks and jobs. What I need to learn is the things that cannot be changed and how it is that they MUST be done, such as the format for reporting data. It is unlikely that I will learn the particular skills I need in the courses I am currently taking. Instead, I will need to find either a medical coding course or get on with someone who can demonstrate these things to me on the job.

What organizations would best support your continued learning after you graduate?

I believe the top three organizations that would prove most useful to me in the endeavors I described above are:

1) American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) – Now known as Association for Talent Development: Would provide me opportunities and information to expand and focus my skills for the particular field in which I wish to work. Would also allow me to discover new ways of applying the skills I already have.

2) International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) – Specifically focused on improving the use of technology in teaching and training. As Performance Improvement is the field that I am most interested in within the medical technology realm, this would be a great resource for me.

3) Society for Applied Learning Technology (SALT) – Dedicated to those whose profession requires knowledge and application of educational technology. This would be a great resource for me to extend my own skills, thereby allowing me to be more effective to those I would be serving. Unfortunately, they are no longer accepting new memberships and will cease to exist once all current memberships expire.

Do you think you would benefit from joining those organizations before graduating?

In this instance, I do believe that joining these organizations prior to graduation would be a benefit to me. As I am looking to move into a very different field, I need to hone my skills to their sharpest and develop as much of a network as possible in order to be able to have the necessary connections for being successful in this new field. These organizations would all make these more possible and easier than they would otherwise be. They would also demonstrate to potential employers my level of dedication and earnestness, so that I don’t look like just someone who walked in off the street hoping to tell professional medical personnel how to do their jobs.

References:

Reiser, Robert V.; Dempsey, John V.. Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (3rd Edition) (Page 276). Pearson HE, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Association for Talent Development https://www.td.org/

International Society for Performance Improvement https://www.ispi.org/

Society for Applied Learning Technology http://salt.org/salt.asp?ss=l

Trends and Issues

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 2 of these 5 contexts and compare/contrast the IDT trends and issues. Then describe how knowledge of IDT trends and issues you captured from those two fields can better inform your work.

I have chosen to focus on P-12 Education because it is what I have worked in for so many years and Healthcare Education because informal research in healthcare is one of my hobbies. These two fields, at first, seem vastly different from one another. However, their ultimate goal is the same: make possible for their audience/customers to efficiently acquire necessary knowledge and skills.

In P-12, we are focused on many different contents, goals, and subjects. That is to say, we are not really very focused, at all. Each teacher, at least above a certain grade level, may focus on one or two subjects, but never delves very deeply into that subject. Additionally, P-12 education is one of the last professional sectors to adopt new technologies and techniques, for many reasons, not the least of which is lack of funding

Healthcare Education, on the other hand, is much more effective in reaching its goals because it focuses its purpose and addresses only what needs to be addressed. Where P-12 education is about building a foundation on which to build future knowledge, healthcare education is about putting the finishing touches on previously built structures. Additionally, healthcare education, instead of being last to adopt new technologies and techniques, they often develop them or drive the develop of them.

While we use some Problem Based Learning in P-12, it is all too often disconnected from real-world application. In fact, in my experience, PBL in P-12 most often winds up driving the lessons, instead of being a tool to accomplish a task or goal.

2. Chapters in Section VI discuss global trends and issues in IDT. What have you learned from the selected chapter and how can/will it enhance your teaching? In a global and more connected society, we face unprecedented challenges that have implications for learning. How and can we prepare our youth to develop cultural sensitivity when working with people from the another (or your selected) region? Does our current education system, curriculum, and instructional practices help learners foster the skills necessary to tackle these issues? What can be done in your role?

European trends in educational design are so fractured as to give one a raging headache just trying to figure out who is doing what with what. Each country that is part of the EU tends to have it’s own trends, ideas and preferences in education and education design. As the author, Phil Green, states: some countries don’t even recognize teacher training and certification as having any validity or relevance. Instead, they have adopted the attitude that the only person qualified to teach someone else is the person who has “been there, done that.” Because those people are generally business leaders who are still engaged in their regular, everyday jobs, teaching takes a backseat to other considerations and obligations. According to Green, only the United Kingdom has made efforts to create a professional, structured environment in teaching. And, technology in education is little better. Green states that technology in education is really just a digitized version of the same old content and methods. As I understand him, they just use technology as a new way of doing the same lessons and activities they have been doing since the 1960’s or even earlier. But, he did mention that there are places where technology has a bigger role, but not a much more effective one: the most effective and “modern” use of technology that he describes is the use of technology to disseminate information and lessons, i.e. video lessons that take the place of in-persons lectures.

References

Raiser, R.A. and Dempsey, J.J. (2012) Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology 3rd Ed.

Improving Student Accountability for Equipment

Human Performance Improvement is a field that was actually around for many decades before it was named and defined. Usually, it seems that we, as educators, tend to try to adjust our instructional approach whenever there is any issue or shortcoming in HPI. However, because human performance is really more a behavioral issue, instructional adjustments rarely have any significant impact on it. Rather, there needs to be some change to the operational end of the things in order to affect HP and to achiever HPI.

Because I frequently used technology in my classes, especially computer access, it was not unusual for me to issue different pieces of equipment to different students. Usually, I would simply have a notebook in which I would keep track of which pieces of equipment were issued to which student, when and for what purpose. This manual database usually included a schedule of when equipment was to be returned by the students. However, this system had limitations. If the document was ever lost, we had to rely on memories in order to track and recover equipment. Later on, I decided to create a spreadsheet of the same information and be sure to save it with significant redundancy so as to eliminate the issues associated with documentation being lost or misplaced, even temporarily. This was a workable solution, but still cumbersome and time consuming.

One school that I visited, had a technology department that operated differently from the others I was aware of. This school had adopted digital student identification cards very early. They had actually started using ID cards with magnetic strips in the late 1980’s. When they adopted a 1-to-1 iPad program across the district, they realized that they could use their student ID system to help with tracking and maintaining the iPads. They had acquired a student database that was relatively infinitely expandable. They could add data fields, add students, add campuses, etc. as needed. So, they created a new field in their database that would allow them to use the electronic IDs to issue, track and recover their iPads as needed. As an iPad was issued to a student, the device’s digital ID was scanned into the student database and connected to the student’s digital ID card which was also scanned at the same time. In addition to this, they also had every iPad setup so that it had GPS tracking activated in such a way that it was supposed to be impossible to deactivate. They told me that, in 5 years of using this system, they had only failed to recover 3 iPads. Out of approximately 750 issued each year, that is pretty amazing. It is especially amazing when you discover that 2 of those 3 “lost” were issued to students who moved out of the state unexpectedly and over the course of a weekend.

A performance support system (PSS) is a set of tools and access that allow a person to perform a job or task as efficiently as possible with minimal training and/or intervention. These can be as simple as reminder systems or as complex as online databases of information needed to perform any given job and the tasks thereof. In order to make this district’s system of tracking and maintaining their iPads more successful, the technology department could institute a PSS that would help the students to successfully use and maintain the iPads without intervention or direct assistance from the technology department. One part of that could be timely reminders on the device to the student to ensure that the device was connected to a power supply and had internet access at the appropriate times to receive pushed updates. There could also be a “how-to” app or online information that would have step-by-step instructions for students to be able to do many of the different tasks that are necessary to keep their devices running efficiently, or to address errors and malfunctions up to a specified level so that the technology department is only having to deal with major issues and “re-imaging” of devices that have been returned.

Knowledge Management is built into this system as the whole thing is set up on a database system. But, there is a piece that could be added to the process that would allow the technology department to improve their own performance and success rates. They should create either a database or spreadsheet system to enter and access information gained by the techs in dealing with students and student devices. For example, if during last school year, it was discovered that 80% of students had discovered a “backdoor” for installing apps that were not authorized and a tech has discovered how to close that “backdoor” that information would be entered into the database for other techs to be able to access, and also as a basis or starting point for dealing with similar future incidents.

Informal learning is and should remain informal. Some of what is learned in that informal time could be added to the formal/managed learning. I have always visited with other people at my schools. The information I was able to gather from those informal discussions was sometimes more valuable than the information that is presented in workshops and professional development sessions. Sometimes it is also information that cannot be presented in a formal setting because it is individualized to a specific person/situation. But, sometimes, it is also information that everyone should know. These pieces of “informal learning” should be codified and added to the PD sessions. They include things like who to talk to about specific situations, especially when that person is not the “official” person for a given issue. But, on the whole, informal learning is effective specifically because it is informal, so that people are more comfortable sharing and receiving the information. In the scenario above, the informal learning could be something like: “Student Xyz Abc is known to leave his iPad in various places around town. It might be a good idea to occasionally run a GPS locate on it to be sure it is not sitting down the street on top of the gas pump where he gets gas every couple of days.” This would be a piece of informal learning that would best be left informal. After all, it only applies to one student and is a piece of information that would not be of much use to anyone other than the technologist who would run the GPS scans on the devices.

References

Raiser, R.A. and Dempsey, J.J. (2012) Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology 3rd Ed.

Limited Resources Project

I have been informed by my principal that we have been awarded a grant of $10,000 to implement the use of technology in the classroom. Because this is a pretty tight budget, I am tasked with making the most of the resources that we have to work with. In order to make this work, I realize that I am going to need some assistance and input from others on the campus. Also, because those people are not highly familiar with this type of project, nor are loaded up with tons of extra time, I realize that I need to lay out a plan for success for our team.

To make our team as successful as possible, I will call on the assistance of those people at our school who are most likely to be involved with the implementation of the technology once the program is put into place. Those people include: the Instructional Technologist, the Technology Director, and at least 3 other teachers who will use the technology. So that we can be efficient and not have anyone feel like they are being imposed upon, unduly, I will start the process by delegating to each person a specified set of tasks that are to be accomplished in a set order. Because we need to work as a team, the tasks will be interdependent on the tasks of other team members. For example, the teachers will be assigned to develop a set of rough plans for how they will use the new technology in their classes. Those plans will be passed to the IT who will use them to research technologies that are within budget and still meet the largest number of needs expressed in those plans. As the project progresses, we communicate progress, roadblocks, uncertainties, etc. As needed, I will guide the participants to develop solutions to perceived issues. Then, there will be small rewards along the way as we reach different goals that will help to keep us all motivated. Those rewards can be as small as time to just sit and visit with each other or as elaborate as me bringing a meal for the team on a day when we have reached a particularly important or difficult goal.

Applying Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation Model

I have chosen to use Kirkpatrick’s Model for this section because it is from an actual experience. I had created and implemented a professional development session for my fellow professionals at a former school. And, the model I used to evaluate my performance and the effectiveness of the training was the Kirkpatrick Model, even though I didn’t know, at the time that it had a name. I won’t say the effort was a dismal failure, but it wasn’t a resounding success either. It made some changes and effected some growth in community relations, but still has a long way to go to achieve its original purpose, even after about 8 years.

The principal asked if I would create and present a training session to teach our staff to create and maintain their web pages for communication with students, parents, and community. After developing and presenting the training, I knew I needed to determine the effectiveness of my efforts. So, at the end of the session, I had every participant fill out an evaluation form where they told me, anonymously, what they thought of the session and describing at least one, preferably three, thing they had learned. That survey corresponds to levels 1 and 2 of Kirkpatrick’s Model. Then, as the semester wore on, I followed up with those who had participated in order to discover if their learning had changed anything that they did or how they did it, level 3. At the end of the year, we ran a community survey to find out if the parents, students and community stakeholders had enjoyed and benefited from the changes that were accomplished through this training session, level 4.

References

Raiser, R.A. and Dempsey, J.J. (2012) Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology 3rd Ed.

Defining the Field

Developing a Definition of IT

Because I have been studying Instructional Technology for over fifteen years, my own definition of it has developed over time. While the authors, in Chapter 1 define IT as:

“. . .the study and ethic practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources”

my own definition started out about where the chapter began: The adding in of technology elements such as movies, computer programs, etc. to a lesson plan.

But, as I began to teach in schools that provided more access to different and more advanced technologies, I started to question that view. I reasoned that, after all, if it’s just an add on, why keep advancing to newer and newer versions of the same thing. Why not develop different forms of technology. For example, we had word processor software on computers back in the 1980’s which worked pretty well. So, if technology is just an add-on, why would we need newer, better versions of word processors? We wouldn’t!

Then, I was introduced to Alan November at a professional development seminar. His philosophy that technology should not be additive, but transformative addressed the very questions I was debating in my own mind. According to November, technology should not be just a bigger faster way of doing the same old things. Instead, it should be a new way of thinking, of doing, of learning, of functioning.

At that point, I thought I had my definition of IT set. It was using technological tools to find new ways to do the tasks that we, as teachers and students, have to do.

Then, on reading Reiser and Dempsey’s definition, I was brought to the realization that educators also need to contribute to the development of new technologies. After all, who is better qualified to guide the process of creating and developing new educational tools?

Applying IT

During a class for my current degree, I created the design of a game-based lesson to teach students holiday and party vocabulary, customs and traditions in Spanish. This game was designed to allow students to first practice their vocabulary in a home setting where they were playing the role of exchange students in a Spanish speaking country. Then, as the game progressed, they were assigned by a member of the host family to go into the market place and get the supplies for the celebration that they were preparing to celebrate. At each “vendor” the student had to request what was needed from that shop and successfully secure the needed supplies. Only upon successfully completing the shopping at that particular shop could they move on to the next shop. If they requested something incorrectly, the shopkeeper would present them with what they actually requested. Then, the student would have to correct and clarify, re-attempt the request. The game was successfully completed, or won, when the student had successfully completed all shopping tasks, assisted with preparations, and celebrated with the family.

1. ID is student centered – focused on elements that the student would enjoy and be likely to actually use in life

2. ID is goal oriented – prepare students for life in a foreign country where they would have the potential to visit through either a foreign exchange program or an educational travel opportunity

3. ID focuses on meaningful performance – celebrations, holidays, culture, traditions are part of life for everyone, in every part of the world

4. ID assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way – every “level” of the game and the game as a whole required students to achieve a minimum level of proficiency before moving to the next level

5. ID is empirical, iterative, and self-correcting – students had the opportunity to improve their performance at every “level” even if they achieved more than the minimum level of proficiency; when students did not meet the minimum level, they were presented with review materials that would help them to brush up on their language before the next attempt at that level

6. ID typically is a team effort – This one was minimal in this particular development. I consulted with other Spanish teachers who approved different aspects and offered suggestions, but nothing beyond that.

Instruction Media – What is Included?

Instructional design and instructional media are different things, as Reiser points out, but they do work together. Without media, at least a minimal amount of it, no amount of ID will get us very far. For example, in my game that I designed, there wouldn’t be any progress toward the goal of learning a chunk of the Spanish language without the media of the software, the computer or other device on which to run the software and the media through which the lessons were presented prior to the students attempting the game.

While I agree with Reiser that chalkboards (or marker boards) and teachers are not instructional media, I have to disagree about the textbooks. Books are media. Textbooks are created with the purpose of educating someone on some subject. Therefore, textbooks are instructional media. Admittedly, they are a very old technology, but are still in use and still useful.

On the other hand, teachers and chalkboards are like the printers and paper that we use with our computers. They aren’t the media, but rather one means of creating that media.

Instructional design must incorporate media in order to be successful. As I mentioned above, without some form of media through which to transmit the lessons of the ID, there would be no point in creating any amount of instructional design, because it would serve no purpose. However, I do not believe that ID should designate any particular media as the only means to use. Rather, it should offer suggestions of different media that could be used, but allow that the teacher could reasonably adapt the design to whatever media is available. This is especially important if we want teachers to push the envelope of incorporating new technologies into their classes.