Definitions and Designers

 

My privileged yet limiting experience is being raised by divorced, competitive parents both seeking multiple advanced degrees in education and technology in the 1980s, who imbued me with all the ed-theory, psycho-social, gifted-talented, melting-pot fruitcake educational theory the ‘80s had to offer. After my mom earned her Master's of Computer Science with the first graduating class in that field, her earliest promotions were related to her ability to set up the workstations, extension cords, computers, monitors, mice, and keyboards in a spare classroom (many of these schools already owned the computers as part of a free computer program through Macintosh; since staff didn’t know how to use the machines, they might have sat until a new hire took the initiative, or a new position, such as educational technology coordinator, like my mom). Meanwhile, my dad pursued a PhD in Math Education. His work with state testing boards included practicing the standardized tests on me. “How was this (!fun math!) test compared to the one yesterday? Here, do this horseshoe puzzle while I write that up. “ 

As a visual artist, I think static design can be instructional; it is precisely planned and organized/ orchestrated (for example what is included/excluded from an image and how; how are color and shapes used to move around the eye/engage the viewer). I use this approach to design educational visual materials for non-profits (What do we want to say and how in depth can we go in this media? What can be said visually? How can it be described with graphics/illustrations? What text is needed to build the context? What hyperlinks can provide supporting data?).  

My initial image of the Instructional Designer is one who creates meaningful educational experiences, which is how I have strived to be as a teacher. My instructional design is based on my visual arts and marketing background, which emphasized a systematic approach to creative problem solving that emphasized using physical materials and experimentation.  

The evolution of how the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) defines the field reflects how educational research has advanced theories within (and about) the field. For example, the role of the teacher shifted in the early 1970s, from information-giver to learning-facilitator (Januszewski, 2008), just as my parents were entering their college years.  

In educational contexts, we expect a higher level of engagement and feedback than we would with a static/non-interactive medium like a poster, magazine/book, web article, or educational film or tv show. Contemporary instructional settings include lectures, discussions, visual aids, written or “voted” responses, experiments, community encounters, etc. As a teacher, I facilitated similar educational activities while also considering individual student’s evaluations and department curriculum needs.  

I designed "user experiences” that guided students to learn simple to progressively more complex skills kind of like a game tutorial (as in: “Learn this; now try it till you can do it; then go to the next step; repeat”). My field also emphasizes visual literacy, so aesthetic lessons trained students to keenly observe the world to better understand it with visual images, video interviews, discussion, etc. As the arts are for all students, I linked discussions to science, history, culture, and media whenever possible. Based on Molenda and Boling’s (2008) descriptions of early educational designers, I would now describe these as systematic and aesthetic approaches. 

Later 20th century definitions further acknowledged the shifting roles of the teacher, but also the learner and their process in addition to their ability to produce answers (Januszewski, 2008). So how do we define or differentiate the work of an Instructional Designer from that of a teacher? Is it scale? Audience? Specialization?  

The current definition is "Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources" (Molenda, 2008, p. 81). 

Computer scientist Ray Kurzweil proposed a theory that technological advancement occurs exponentially, rather than linearly; he calls this the Law of Accelerating Returns (Wikipedia Foundation, 2024). It seems reasonable to extrapolate from that that uses for technology may also accelerate faster, so it stands to reason a specialist using technology would need to be reevaluate its effectiveness in achieving a desirable, measurable result. 

 

 

------ 

References 

Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (2008). Chapter 1: Definition. In Educational Technology: A Definition with Commentary (pp. 1-14). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Januszewski, A., & Persichitte, K. A. (2008). Chapter 10: A history of the AECT’s definitions of educational technology. In A. Januszewski & M. Molenda (Eds.), Educational technology (pp. 259-282). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

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. 

Molenda, M., & Boling, E. (2008). Chapter 4: Creating. In Educational Technology: A Definition with Commentary (pp. 81-139). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, January 14). Accelerating change. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#:~:text=An%20analysis%20of%20the%20history,progress%20(at%20today’s%20rate).