It is all about technology- Future Directions

Technology leads the future directions of instructional technology. It is no longer a question if we should use technology in instructional design, but a question regarding how to skillfully use the technology for better achievements. As Molenda and Bichelmeyer addressed Performance Improvement is a focus in corporation, the yielding results are more important than methods. We need to overlook the effectiveness of instructional materials in a long run.

Technological equipments evolve in rapid speed. They contain more and more dynamic functions which can not be provided by tradition media such as cassette tapes, VHS tapes and etc. Even though there are still some portions of people do not accept high-tech products as Molenda and Bichelmeyer mentioned in the articles, they still need to accept the reality of technology’s pervasiveness and convergence. It is more constructive to find a way to fully use technology in instruction and other fields instead of blindly rejecting it.

In other words, the philosophy and method of adopting technology should be emphasized. People are unconsciously afraid or rejected things they do not know because it takes enormous time and efforts to be familiar with new invention or materials. In addition, the new concepts or techniques mean “change.” Changing is quite scary, but it is how the life is. Life is evolving daily as the same as technology. Developing better tutorial or helpful materials to help people overcome fear of technology appears necessary. Contrary to the concept (technology controls people) of the movie, “Matrix”, knowing technology can prevent us from being controlled.

Ethical Dilemma

While Coral and I were preparing the instructional activity for “ethical dilemma”, I realized there is always a way to solve ethical problems. Even though everybody has different approach to solve the problems, the win-win situation should be the goal to achieve. I summarized the following steps according to our experience in preparing the activity:

1. Understand laws and regulations along with ethical codes.
2. Know the bottom line among stakeholders.
3. Perform “give-and-take” strategy.
4. Write down reasons why we choose to comply or violate with some ethical codes. (This can prevent future confusion and criticism).
5. NEVER cause human harm.

Every job has ethical dilemma, don’t be too panic to meet all ethical codes. Choose the best solution for all stakeholders, and always remember our main stakeholders are learners.

Yes, be moral in instructional design.

As my posting regarding moral and ethics of instructional design, I believe the moral issue is very important. Unfortunately, it is usually neglected. Dr. Osguthorpe mentioned instructional designers are leaders. They should have correct and moral concept while they are doing design. When users interact with instructional materials, their values and concepts have been influenced. It is like videogames and movies. Many people discover kids imitate characters in violent video games and movies.

Even though instructional designing process usually does not involve with violent or too emotional materials, the material itself is somewhat influencing. Since we are interacting with our learners, we should bring current and constructive knowledge to them. Lead people in the right path. The moral codes carry out the righteous intentions. If the intention is right, the product can be modified and modified till it becomes effective. However, nothing is good if the intention is wrong.

More career and competencies reflection

After reading Byun’s article, I think instructional designers should keep themselves current and stand in technological edge. They are required to catch the technology flow, for example, from print design to web/computer based design. The value of their job is to bring new information and communicate (transfer) it with others. For getting the job done better, they should have attractive personality to be respected and listened to, namely, the professional image. I start to wonder how easy to get an instructional designer job. I ask myself, how can I present my self professional enough to obtain an instructional designer’s job? Do my professional abilities match the survey competencies? Am I learning what employers need?

Even though Neil Postman does not agree education should be led by the employment market in “the end of education”, I still believe it is important to have enough training to meet career requirements. It is why we are in the school. I separate competencies into two categories:

1. For getting a job, we need to be trained with good professional skills: instructional design and development, computer and writing skills.

2. For maintaining the job, I think management and communication abilities are the most important competencies because they bring interaction with others, which can help smoothen job progress.

Moral Dimensions of Instructional Design

In Osguthorpe’s article, the moral is defined as “instructional designers conduct and view their wok in relation to those who will use their instructional products.” That is, instructional designers need to focus on learners (users). They not only need to be a good artist, but also a leader who has good conscience of craft, membership, sacrifice, memory, and imagination. In other words, for being a good instructional designer, a person needs to be able to lead the situation and come up alternative solutions in a short time with wise judgment.

Instructional designers can not treat their jobs as same-old routine. They need to probe into depth in every scope and relationship with team members and users. Recently, I watched a movie, “Groundhog Day”, which is a quite popular film. Phil, the main character, is the weather man who provides information to his audience. However, he does not enjoy the job and treat it as the same old routine. There was no human interaction in his job, and he is not happy. In the end, he has changed to a person who is willing to look into people’s need and leads (changes) the situation. He becomes a subject to act instead of an object to be acted upon. Similarly, instructional designers are active subjects to act and lead the situation.

Since the instructional products can influence users’ minds and mental activities, instructional designers need to be careful with what/how they lead others. They play the role of teacher or the weather man, Phil. The information they provide is inactive, but the personality and their approach directly interact with users. Instruction and teaching seek to change the current situation. If users can feel the care and understanding from the program or instructional materials they are using, they have better retention and are willing to be changed. Then the learning (the change from the current status to be a better being) can occur.

Career Research Reflection

From the researching process, I have discovered the gap between what we have learned and the real world situation. Those techniques we focus are more general, and the real-world situation focuses on design and development.

Obviously, instructional technology and human performance technology are separate in the work place. They belong to different types of firms. HPT plays the role of consulting, and IT is more like developing training materials such as job aids, instructional materials, etc. Instructional technologists think they have dealt with human performance, but not too much. I speculate if working in the HR department of general companies instead of instructional design firms, IT needs to be involved with HPT field

I start to think about what kinds of jobs I can do if I am planning to work in USA. Technical writing is an important task for instructional designer. If I want to become an instructional designer in USA, it will be hard for me to be qualified unless the subject deals with Chinese. This makes me to reconsider my career preparation regarding abilities and working locations.

I don’t think salary is not too competitive comparing with other jobs. Does it mean “say goodbye to big money”? I don’t know about the answer. It depends on how good we are. Even though most instructional designers are not satisfied with the pay, they still feel comfortable with it. They enjoy the ongoing learning process and stay in the edge technology. Therefore, I guess salary is just on indicator to help get satisfaction. The most important thing is “happiness”, isn’t it? Be happy with what you do.

Skill Set for the Human Performance Technologist

I like Stolovitch’s article which synthesize variety of theories, knowledge, and practical experience about HP. As like Stolovitch et al mentioned “HPT is empirical and evolving”, it brought general view that HPT searches for expertise through practice. Experience and practice in technical (analysis and design abilities) and people (management and communication) skills prepare HPTs to be skilled.

There are three important messages from this article:

1. Personal growth: The first step of being HPT is personal growth. I believe HPT’s skills are not only for organization, but personal growth. If a HPT does not know how to calculate his personal PIP (potential of improving performance), how can he correctly calculate PIPs in organizations? It reminds me of a famous personal growth instructor (maybe HPT as well), Anthony Robins. He helps people to change their lives after he performed the same personal growth system on himself. It brings strong force to convince and change others.
   
2. Result (solutions) driven: It is in vain to perform operation on the dead. Result is the same as “accomplishment.” If a HPT can not solve problems with good solution, that means they are not good performers.
3. Sociability construct: In George Kelly’s book, he noted “sociability construct” as “playing a role in the social process involving the other person.” That is, we need to know people we are serving, or we won’t know how to provide the best for them. Knowing stakeholders, situations, and relationship provides great opportunity to succeed. In addition, every step should be done with flexibility when applying standards and systematic solutions in situations.

Design Experiments

Collin’s article: The long-term goal of design experiment is “to construct a design theory for technology innovation.” It is not hard to picture how the future education will be. Technology leads education. As the speech in CID exhibition last week, the future research needs to connect with the technology with effective pedagogy. Software is updating and renewing so rapidly to meet the education’s need. Maybe in the future, people do not need to go to the school for their complete education and obtain better knowledge than the classroom instruction.

I like Brown’s article about design experiments, whose goal is to increase lasting retention. However, when conducting design experiment, those effects: Bartlett effect (sample selection), Hawthorne effect (better performance in experiment), and Dewey effect (readiness and pedagogical creed) can occur to influence results. I think there is another effect affecting experiments: personal constructs. Before conducting experiment, we have set up our hypothesis (our construct) to invisibly influence our experiments.

It seems Brown appreciates reciprocal teaching, community learning and personal constructs. Reciprocal Teaching is different from traditional teaching. Learners are no longer passive receivers but are assigned to some specific task which includes question formation and answer searching. Instructors provide background information and remind students when they are astray from the topic or the solutions are not appropriate. Through practical question-answer quest, learners realize the model and know how to solve problems. Reciprocal teaching is not only benefits reading and writing classes, but other fields of learning subjects.

In short, the design experiment is the process to discover better pedagogical ways (for example, communities of learner) with the help of technology. It searches the methods to improve retention and metacognition in real-world situation, which is the lifelong learning.