Section 7: New Directions for Instructional Design

Distributed Learning Examples

There are a variety of distributed learning examples in chapter 28 of the Reiser text. Using the list of links and the internet, I was able to find many to review.

Corporate Distributed Learning

SyberWorks is a corporate solution for many distributed learning applications. It has web conferencing as well as a training center and web authoring tools. There are many companies that realize that corporations have limited in-house resources for training. A solution like SyberWorks can be a great time saver, and likely a money saver over hiring a staff to create from scratch many of the applications that are available on-line.

Academic Distributed Learning

Jones International University is online university. They were the first to receive regional accreditation. They offer education and business degree plans that range from certificate programs to doctorates in both. The degrees can be achieved completely at the virtual campus. I thought the online graduation was anticlimactic, however, if you took all your classes online it might not seem that odd.

Hybrid Classes

Texas A&M University has offered hybrid courses. Recently I finished two different SED courses that met occasionally but most classes were online. I have found that online courses are terrific for busy people who can access their education in their own time instead of fitting into set time slots as with normal “bricks and mortar” classes. A drawback can be the drudge of getting stuck behind a computer for hours at a time with no social interaction.

Skills Based Training

Apropos Smart Characters is an online tool for learning Chinese and Japanese by using an online word processor that works in these languages. I originally thought this would be a Knowledge based learning site, but it is really just tools that can help a user create correspondence. I have found in teaching English that one of the best ways to get my students spelling correctly is to let them use a word processor. By continually correcting the student’s mistakes, and forcing them to choose a correct spelling or usage, they start to learn. The Apropos system seems to work the same way, but also has interpreters.

Free Distributed Learning

http://www.nationaltechcenter.org/index.php/2009/09/03/federated-registry-architectures/ The National Center for Technology Innovation has free distributed learning through Webinars. In September there was a free webinar on “Choosing Authoring Tools”. They had a webinar on “Creating Reusable Content with SCORM. Many of these webinars are still available for download.

Reusability

When I was working toward my undergraduate in English Literature, it was mandatory that I take Physics. I was actually very interested in science and how things worked in the world and universe. The graduate student who taught the course was very difficult to understand because English was not his first language. He mispronounced and stumbled through lectures as quickly as he could so he could get to what he really enjoyed which was scribbling exotic formulas to explain the world and universe. I had to go to tutoring every day after class to re-learn the work and struggled horribly. Of course this was back in the late 1980’s, so technology has changed quite a bit, even though elementary Physics likely covers similar material.

There are many things that I would have changed about the class to give it more reusability. If the instructor had difficulty lecturing, then I would find video lectures from great physicists and play them for the class and give the class links to where they could find other relevant video or audio lectures. Instead of scribbling on a chalk board, I would find a white board with handwriting identification software to show formulas in a neater format. In addition, the course should have been applied to real life experiences. Students should have worked together on problem based learning models, outside figuring the height of buildings without climbing them, or figuring out how long it take gravity to act on something dropped from the top of a building etc. If the learning were to take place in a virtual setting then simulations could be found online for students to work through and save the resources in their bookmarks on their computer or a program such as Delicious.

Rich Media

Nanotechnology

The science fiction world of yesterday is happening today. Nanotechnology, for years, has been thought of as a spectacular creation of limitless possibilities. I would like a chip imbedded in my finger that would instantly know exactly what inventory I have of longboard equipment in my warehouse. The chip would read all the tags within 500 feet. It could transmit the data to an application on my PDA to keep a running total on a spread sheet, that would be of great help. The chip might chime my cellphone alarm if I am running out of a particular item and highlight every time I open the application. Right now items are scanned into inventory and are supposed to be scanned out, but things get put in the wrong place, some items are given away as promotion, some go missing for whatever reason. It would be nice to have a definitive inventory.

The Inclusive Road

The inclusive road is definitely the way of the future instructional design and technology. It seems that the world-wide web is the great equalizer for most businesses and applications. There is no discrimination when people interact relatively anonymously on the web. People and ideas are taken for what they are. Even though there are many corporations looking to profit by creating educational designs, the marketplace on the web is world-wide dictates that competition will eventually race most good ideas to zero on pricing. The “race to zero” is basically pricing that is under-cut by competition until there is no profit to be made by anyone involved. So, with that model, unless someone comes up with a unique patented design, or continually chases after emerging technologies, most likely they will eventually become obsolete. This is why staying plugged in to the technological community is so important, and why the diffusion of information that Brent Wilson speaks of is such an issue. Years ago it was easy to stay up on journals and communities because the industry was small. Now it has branched in so many directions that it is difficult to stay up on the latest trends.

The dilemma for an instructional designer is to stay relevant or perish. Certainly understanding the cycle time of a product or technology will be important, but also continually creating new and different theories and designs. From my experience in business, I know that the most talented graphic artists have a shelf life of about 5 years before they are out of ideas and become stale. The only way to continue to be current is to be a great manager. A great manager can hire quality individuals, understand their usefulness, and unfortunately, know when they are no longer useful. In today’s market place, it seems that the first person or company to come up with a great application, offer it for free, and then sell advertising time on the website will probably win out in the end. Finding that product is the key.