Module 1 >> Part A

Week 2: Instructional Technology Overview

Welcome to Week 2! To begin our journey through the foundations of instructional technology we start by considering how the field is defined by people in the field. As you will find out, there is not a single, unified view. However, one of the major professional associations has attempted to promote the idea of definition-by-consensus. You are invited to form your own opinion.

Introduction:

If you are just entering the field of instructional technology (some prefer the name educational technology) it would not be surprising if you had only a vague idea about what the field consists of or even what its name means. As it happens, even seasoned professionals still debate these questions. So you are not alone. Indeed, you might say that the major purpose of R511 is to help you work out your own interpretation of what instructional technology is, what it stands for, and what ideas provide its foundations.

A bit of background to this week's readings: the field had its origins in the visual education movement in the 1920s. As times changed and new technologies emerged, new definitions of the field and new mission statements emerged, usually initiated by the major professional association - the Society for Visual Education, then the Department of Audio-Visual Instruction, then the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Monographs discussing new definitions were issued in 1963, 1977, and 1994.

The first of the required readings for this module is an essay by Prof. Castelle "Cass" Gentry. He was what we call a "reflective practitioner" and in this essay, written in 1987, he reflects on the many possible meanings of technology - educational and instructional. We recommend it as a starting place because Gentry raises so many good questions; he introduces dozens of concepts, all of which are worth considering.

Pre-Lesson Exercise

Before you do the readings or other lesson activities, think about this...

Objectives:

Overall Objective: To move toward generating your own definition of the concept and field of IT.

Objective 1: You will be able to reproduce, approximately, the 2004 AECT definition of instructional technology.

Objective 2: Given others' definitions of instructional technology, you will be able to compare and contrast the critical elements in those definitions

Objective 3: Given a variety of definitions, you will be able to synthesize them to generate your own definition of instructional technology, which you could explain and justify to your peers.

Readings:

Required Readings:

• Note that this is a preliminary report of the AECT Definition and Terminology Committee. The final report will be a book, The Definition of Educational Technology, expected to be published in 2007.

Optional Reading:

• We recommend reading Chapters 1 and 2 only. This was the officially adopted definition prior to the one coined by Seels and Richey in 1994. You will note that it is considerably more complex and hair-splitting than the later one. It was based on more research and wider discussion than the 1994 definition. Please take special note of the careful distinction that is made between educational and instructional technology.

• AECT (2004). Definition of Educational Technology. Pre-publication draft.

  This is a somewhat more detailed explanation of AECT's new definition, which is still a work in progress. The definition sentence is the same as in Januszewski (2004) but the explanation is different. It was authored primarily by Dr. Molenda, so it is complementary to the narration in the presentation for Module B.

Additional Resources:

**ERIC Digests are handy summaries of the knowledge base in various areas of education. They were produced between 1965 and 2004, under the aegis of ERIC, a document storage and retrieval system operated by the US Department of Education. In 2004 the original ERIC system was dismantled, and a new, comparable system has replaced it. Go to http://eric.ed.gov/. There you can search for all ERIC documents, including ERIC Digests.

There is another agency that offers access just to ERIC Digests: http://ericdigests.org/

Presentation:

These links will open 1) two Flash presentations; 2) Mp3 audio files (two, approximately 15-minute recordings); 3) A PDF version of the presentation, should you want to print it out to take notes. To download the Mp3s or PDF to your hard drive, right click (Windows) or ctrl-click (Macintosh).

Important Copyright Information:
The images used in these presentations have been made available for your instruction and are not intended to be used beyond the limits of this course. Our purpose is to expose you to some of the concepts & images in the field of instructional technology, and not to publish or disseminate the work of others. Although you may download and play this presentation, you may not remove, copy, edit, display publicly (ie. present to an audience), or in any other way use portions or the whole of the text, sounds or images contained in this presentation. Please help us retain this kind of academic freedom of use and do not misuse these presentations.

Synthesis:

In the readings and the presentation you have seen that there has been an ongoing debate about how to represent instructional (or educational) technology to the public, not to mention the different meanings held by people in the field. Note that the presentation emphasizes the need to incorporate "values" into the definition, which was not explicitly done in the earlier versions.

Weekly Wiki Participation: