Instructional Technology

SECTION 1
Foundations of Technology

SECTION 2
Technology and Learning

Technology and Instruction

Technology and Performance

SECTION 3

Impact of Technology

Technology in Education

Technology in Training

WBT

CBT

Technology in Professional Development

SECTION 4
Instructional Media

SECTION 5
Instructional Design

SECTION 6
Human Computer Interactions

SECTION 7
Emerging Technologies

"For centuries the "technology" for transferring skills and knowledge has changed little: one human being teaching another. . . . Now, [the] landscape is awash with a torrent of new technologies, creating almost limitless possibilities for heightened learning."
(Bassi, Cheney, and Van Buren 1997, pp. 46-47).

We need to redefine learning and teaching. What does it mean to be 'interactive?"

Laurillard (1993) comments on interactivity:

"Hypertext, accessing a text database, is not interactive, because there is no intrinsic feedback on the user's actions: the information in the system does not change as a consequence of the user's actions on it; it only changes if they change the system itself, by changing the information or the links directly. So it is no more interactive than
writing in the margins of a book, or editing the book yourself, or annotating it with your own references to another point in the book....as an educational medium, enabling students to develop their academic understanding, it has little to offer."

Laurillard, D. (1993) Rethinking University Teaching: a framework for the effective use of educational technology, Routledge: London.

Bassi, Laurie J.; Cheney, Scott; and Van Buren, Mark. "Training Industry Trends 1997." Training and Development 51, no. 11 (November 1997): 46-59.

Provides a detailed report of three trends: learning technologies, outsourcing, and performance measurements.

"The application of new technologies or media should not be in terms of other media such as print, video or oral traditions. While we should certainly explore the features of new media as part of an on-going process of being aware of the capabilities of various media, we should also spend equal amounts of time thinking about what our students need to learn, what we know about helping them to learn and then and only then, develop strategies to make it possible for them to learn. In evaluating a number of possible learning strategies we should decide to use technologies such as multimedia or the
World-Wide-Web only when that use provides new opportunities for students to learn - to visualise, to understand, to see
complex relationships in ways that are not possible using any other media. " Shirley Alexander

Target teaching to your learners' unique characteristics reflective of their life experiences.

Most important question is "What do I want my students to learn?"

Next consider what is known about the way students learn this " that the features of a number of strategies (both technological and non-technological) should be considered as to their suitability in helping students to learn this topic/concept. from Teaching and Learning on the World Wide Web

Instructional Strategies

Situated Learning

Behaviorist-based theories of learning
CBT

Cognitive-based theories of learning
View learners as purposefully interacting with
the environment and actively constructing an internal world (O'Carroll 1977, p. 119) .

O'Carroll, Peter. "Learning Materials on the World Wide Web: Text Organization and Theories of Learning." Australian Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 37, no. 2 (July 1997): 119-123.

Discusses certain design aspects of WWW instructional documents in the context of a constructivist approach to pedagogy, particularly in relation to the structures employed and the organization of the text.

Uses situated cognition, cognitive apprenticeship, contsructivism, and the social development of knowledge (Slay 1997).

Slay, Jill. "The Use of the Internet in Creating an Effective Learning Environment." Paper presented at AusWeb 97: The Third Australian World Wide Web Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, July 5-9, 1997.
<http://ausweb.scuedu.au/proceedings/slay/paper.html>

Evaluates the use of the Internet in providing an effective learning environment against criteria contained within the qualities desired for University of South Australia's graduates rather than narrower, behaviorist ones based on Skinner.

Web as a training and education tool (WBT)

The Web is "most useful when used to explore intellectual and verbal knowledge" (McManus 1996) to geographically
distributed learners.

McManus, T. F. (1996) Delivering Instruction on the World Wide Web. URL:
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/coe/depts/ci/it/projects/wbi/wbi.html.

According to Gantz (1997), "only about $100 million of the $7 billion that U.S. companies pay for IT [information technology] training and education was spent on Web-based training last year. But that amount will grow more than twentyfold in five years, and companies that have struggled with various training media for years may find that the Web offers a breakthrough" (p. 37). Educational institutions are also increasingly turning to the Web as an instructional tool.

Gantz, John. "Web-based Training Can Help IT Organizations." Computer World 31, no. 9 (July 1997): 37.

Reviews the advantages of web-based training, including projections for its future development and the obstacles to its implementation.

Questions to be addressed when considering WBT

Does it provide an educational environment that is truly
interactive for the learner and is the emphasis on the learner and not the technology?

Improving interaction means developing ways to overcome the discrete transactions of client/server architecture " (Hites & Ewing, 1996)

Hites, Jeanne M., and Ewing, Keith. "Designing and Implementing Instruction on the World Wide Web: A Case Study." Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Society for Performance and Instruction, Dallas, TX, April 1996. <http://lrs.stcloud.msus.edu/ispi/proceeding.html>

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