Michal Molenda (2008) suggests the historical goal of educational technology is to make teaching more efficient. Technology will evolve to include both the “application of scientific thinking and” the media and devices we use to communicate (p. 12).
When it comes to the origins of educational design and technology used to reach that goal, there were many parallel events happening in different fields, like psychology, social sciences, military training programs, audio-visual presentation, and computer (microprocessor) technology, not to mention the commercial rise of private educational content producers/publishers.
Our earliest developmental/learning surge to learn things like language and motor skills, generally happen spontaneously, and later learning like reading or complex thinking are trained in “apprenticeships, schools, and other educational institutions” (Molenda, p. 5).
Notable historic thinkers of learning developed ideas of maieutic instruction, include Socrates (“the Socratic Method”), and Korean philosopher, Yi T’oegye who developed his “Steps of Practical Self-Cultivation" in the 15th century (Michal Molenda, 2008).
The predecessor to the modern classroom began forming in the Renaissance era with its use of classroom arrangement, using visuals and texts as learning materials, using developmental steps to break up the learning objectives, and to use play. These techniques brought education crashing forward with the invention of the black-board, a media-format meant to be viewed by more than one student at a time (Michal Molenda, 2008). This early-19th century invention was soon followed by lantern slides (late 19th century) then silent films (early 20th century). These latter two types coincided with two world wars, which invested heavily in military training strategies, and a rise in privately published educational materials, and a public enthusiasm for the media.
Unfortunately, as we know today, technology quickly becomes obsolete, and the newest generation technology always ends up being more expensive, and not back compatible with older media you might have invested in. By the time “talkies” came around, schools were deeply investing in silent film media and saw the roll of the teacher speaking/integrating the visual content with previous lessons, (justifiably?) over the film as a vital part of the learning experience. Audio learning entered educational settings in the form of records, then radio, and eventually television programming. Each of these spurred the creation of educational content by government, non-profit, religious, and private capital entities.
“Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” is an excellent example of a public television program designed by a child psychologist to teach children emotional and interpersonal social skills. Test groups of children who watched “Mr. Rogers...” were “significantly” more likely to be kind to other children than the group who watched “Sesame Street” (a show that covers a lot of other topics beyond social skills, like reading) (Coates, 1976).
Radical Behaviorism
This term applies to using mechanical devices to condition learning (Molenda, 2008), and was the basis for the programing of early machines and instructional programs (whether software, workshops, or books). This type of learning is heavily influenced by military programing.
Applying the Human Cognitive Model to the Workflow of the Indiana University Archives.
Cognitive theory focuses more on the memory process and how to reinforce memories (i.e. manipulating the black box). The Indiana University policy on Archival Information is an excellent metaphor for the cognitivist's conception of memory as applied to the giant brain that is “institutional memory”. During the sensory information phase, the mind reviews an auditory or visual signal, like a phone call, email, or lab result, and the processing system decides what is important, and what isn’t. We can imagine the density of materials that fall in this category at IU. The information worth looking at is downloaded to your email, your local server or cloud drive, your “short-term memory”. When it is deemed important enough to be loaded into long-term memory / cold storage, it is uploaded in carefully documented packages to record on the tape drives of the Indiana University Scholarly Data Archive. This information can take a little longer to download than the files in your cloud, especially if they are packaged with a lot of information, or are poorly documented/linked to other files (see Driscoll, 2013).
Both constructivism and cognitivism assume “knowledge is constructed by learners” (Molenda, 2018, 15), and is better learned in situated contents like apprenticeships, problem-based learning, and collaboration (Molenda, 2008).
References
Bradshaw, A. C. (2018). Reconsidering the instructional design and technology timeline from the lens of social justice. TechTrends, 62, 336-344.
Cho, Y., Park, S., Jo, S. J., & Suh, S. (2013). The landscape of educational technology viewed from the ETR&D journal. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(5). 677-694.
Coates, B., Pusser, H. E., & Goodman, I. (1976). The Influence of “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on Children’s Social Behavior in the Preschool. Child Development, 47(1), 138–144. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128292
Driscoll, M. P. (2013). Cognitive information processing. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 71-110). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Molenda, M. (2008). Historical foundations. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. V. Merriënboer, & M.P. Dirscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 3-20). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
Reiser, R. A. (2007). A history of instructional design and technology. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (pp. 17- 34). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Subramony, D. P. (2004). Instructional technologists' inattention to issues of cultural diversity among learners. Educational Technology, 19-24.
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