Hi I'm Yoon Pak. I am a professor in the College of Education at Illinois, and I want to talk to you today about the history of instructional design as a series of foundational elements that involves what instructional design is, and as part of the Master track certificate in an instructional design series for Coursera. My specialty area is in the history of education. So, I have a little bit of knowledge in the area and wanted to talk to you today about what are some of the major developments that have changed and evolved over the years in terms of what constitutes instructional media and instructional design. Well, if we look at some of these introductory images, they may not be one's that strike you as particularly radical, revolutionary. But in fact for their time period, it was. The chalkboard of the mid 19th century when public schools were starting to come to formation, it was a wonderful way that teachers could reach the classroom and a larger audience in that light. As also reflected in the last visual that you have of the modern classroom of students sitting in rows, which for better or for worse that's the system that has evolved over time. But the middle went to if we think about early 20th century developments of the gramophone for example, and how that was one of the chief ways that we brought to a mass audience learning systems and technologies. Of course, we tend to think about it in terms of entertainment, but yet for educational purposes, it was meant to be rolled out to pretty much every schools, to every governmental agencies, to workplace elements as well because it was a new learning tool, a new media, and instructional technology for its time period. So, when we think about the origins, the modern origins of instructional design, scholars typically point to the World War Two era. Because in many ways, well, you got really a ready audience to be experimented on, again for better or for worse. But even after World War Two, we have demands for a new skilled workforce. Of course [inaudible] also demanded the various elements of not just men and veterans who came back to get skilled workforce but now you have a growing workforce of women who had to fill in during the war. So what did that mean in that light? There was also with the development of various disciplines in particular, if we think about psychology and that influence in educational psychology for example, it also was the development of different kinds of military programs. What works? What doesn't? How do we gauge the kinds of training programs that can be effective for learners, for the instructors as well, and those that I would say would need to be defined in very broad terms? So, this is the other important element of instructional design that becomes an important element when we think of something like systems theory. So, we have scholars such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Kenneth Boulding who not necessarily radicalized, but in some ways they do radicalized thinking around instructional design. It wasn't called that back then, but certainly their thinking was around that. So, how do we think about these moments in a systemic way. So, in terms of a system being incredibly complex, consisting of interrelated and interacting parts working towards some common goals. And that they're open to and interact with their environments, it's really also to say that we need to think in very fluid and dynamic ways about the way things work. But it's really placing the kinds of advancements and disciplinary knowledge towards instructional design. And so, that's how we do the reflection, the theory with the incorporation of action. That is in many ways the theoretical influence in the development of instructional design. When we go through the latter decades, we will certainly think about the other developments that occurred over time. Now, when we also think about the kind of developments, the evolution throughout the decades in particular, we're looking at the mid 19 fifty's through the mid 19 sixties. Now socially, there's a whole range of things going on that causes many folks to really re-shift their thinking about their place in the world, about their relationship to the places in which they work, as well as our relationships to each other and how that becomes transplanted in schools, in the workplace and other institutions. A pioneer in this regard when we think about cognitive psychology in particular, would be B.F. Skinner, The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching. So, that's really another way that instructional design can be interpreted. It's really the art and science of learning and teaching. How do we do this? How do we teach? How do we learn? How do we get an understanding of all the different types of learners that are around us? And how do we then adjust our thinking and our teaching to meet the needs for you for example? So, in addition to the kinds of programmed instructional materials that are available, it's really meant to be more individual, more individual-based, how revolutionary is it to also think about self-paced instruction? You could take it at your own speed, you could go as fast as you want, as slow as you want. So, it's the self-paced instruction in small incremental steps. It's also how you have students to frequently respond to the questions at hand. So, you don't get all the materials, all the content, and get the question and answer at the end, but it's really as you go. So it's that kind of immediate feedback that's available and, also the importance of sequential learning. So, how do we complete one step before moving on to the next one? And it's always important as we think about these historical developments of instructional design or have any kind of historical precedence of any other elements, is how do we think about in today's contexts? So, for this, how do we think about it considering the movement out there especially in higher education when we think about learning outcomes and assessments? Especially how do students learn in the kinds of environments that they do? How can we best approach our teaching and learning style so that it's available to as many different kinds of learners as possible? It might not be exactly what Skinner was reaching for. But I think the evolution in which that historical tradition moved onto today's context is important to recognize. Along with those, becomes a growth in various behavioral objectives. So, you have Ralph Tyler in the 19 thirty's and thinking about how do we define objectives in terms of the kinds of behaviors that should be developed through instruction? What do we want people to get out of certain instructional elements? Another way to think about it would be Bloom and his colleagues in thinking about the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. So, thinking about the domains of learning through the cognitive, effective, and psychomotor. It's a combination of all these different elements in which the educational objectives is not just a one way through cognitive for example, but it's a holistic way of understanding and of learning in those ways, as well as combining those elements developed by Tyler, and Bloom, and others. Robert Mager in thinking about how do we prepare objectives for a programmed instruction? Certainly in the field of education that becomes very important if teachers for example, need to design classroom objectives for particular content knowledge for students to understand. So, it's really then distilling a lot of the information that you have in the content and saying, what are the major things that you want to get out of this? How can we prioritize these learning objectives not to take away from the content but really focus in on those things that are important to really grasp? And it's not necessarily for learning for that test for example, but it's really learning for that learning sake. So, it's also including those components of learning objectives that takes on the behaviors, the conditions, and the criteria. So, it's also going beyond the sense of cognitive, effective, and psychomotor, but also about the environment that surrounds you. What does learning mean in the context of, let's say for example, how you grew up in a particular social context that you did? How does that affect your understanding and learning and interpretation of the various learning objectives that come into play? So, as we move on through the decades and think about the 1960s, there is an instructional design history, The Element of Criterion-Referenced Testing. So, somebody like Robert Glaser for example, he introduced the concept of criterion-referenced measures. So, it's to say it's not just about if we think about it in today's context of post-test elements, but we need to do the pre-test, post-test, and maybe something in the middle too. So, we need to assess along the way, but also from the very beginning. So we have from one learner to another not these comparative outcomes. But for myself, for example, that I know how did I improve from the beginning of a learning environment to the end of the learning environment, did I, as a learner, get anything out of it. So, that becomes an important element in thinking about criterion-referenced testing. So, it determines the amount of learning gains from the instruction rather than comparing learning outcomes of different students, because does that really necessarily help us to know, or to get at, and to be better instructional designers? The other pioneer in this regard, Robert M.Gagne is the scholar that through his Conditions of Learning, identifies the five domains of learning, I'm sure there are more. But in thinking about it in the pioneering aspects, the verbal information, intellectual skills, psychomotor skills, attitudes, and cognitive strategies as well as the various events of instruction, the nine events of instruction that he calls it, where it's important to activate and facilitate the process of learning. So, again, it's really leaning on that initial tradition of how learning, and teaching, and instructional design needs to be fluid, dynamic, ever changing in that process. I think that's an important element to that. At the same time, an element that Gagne advances is this notion of a hierarchical analysis, in the sense that there are still hierarchical relationships that's important to recognize within the intellectual skills domain. So, basically, it's to say we need to sometimes scaffold our knowledge base, so that there's an importance of learning some of the sub-skills first to be able to learn the skills at the next level. Now, there's always exceptions to that. It's just like a child learning to walk, you get the sitting up, and crawling, and balancing yourself before you can be an expert walker and runner. Of course I know there are exceptions to those rules, but that's basically the way if we can think about these hierarchical relationships and why we need to add some points, master the basic levels before we can move on to the next, because it provides an essential foundation for the learning task analysis. If we think about that too, in the instructional design process, that's the way we can scaffold our knowledge, the content area expertise with that element of how we teach the content, and provide that instructional design content in those ways. There's also, and it goes without saying, not just an instructional design, but throughout our whole society in the United States, the launching of Sputnik in 1957. Really, not just creating a fundamental shift in instructional delivery, but society writ large. It's really the emphasis then on science, technology, math, and of course technology thinking about it differently in the late 1950's than in today, but how does our whole society fundamentally change with the launching of Sputnik and its effects on instructional delivery? It's then rethinking and retooling ourselves where somebody like Michael Screven who brings out and teases out the importance of testing out drafts of instructional materials prior to a final launch. Basically to say, not only is it important leaning on previous traditions to assess along the way, but we also need to be testing things along the way because we need to ensure that these kinds of final product that we have really works for different groups and different audiences, and so how do we become more systematic in the study and the testing of these materials? As a way, in those developments in the 1960's as well, how do we then begin to make a distinction between formative evaluation and summative evaluation, so that it becomes then a process not just an endpoint in themselves. But taken together along these different points of learning and instruction, it becomes a holistic mechanism for understanding the ways of learning. Through that, we have formative evaluation of programmed instruction that comes into play as well as those who questioned elements of, well, you know what? Somebody like Susan Markle, for example, in providing the procedural contributions to instructional design, formative evaluation teaching to say, we also need to be systematic and rigorous in our methods of testing, of experimenting, of understanding the processes by which we provide instructional design. So, it's all the scholars work over time taking into consideration how the field has moved along in different ways, and how instructional designers have then regrouped and reshape those elements together. So, in the 1960s, as we continue on in that era from the early to mid 1960's, there were concepts related to instructional design that emerged and link together. This is how also. various instructional design terms that you will get to know and that we introduce here will be developed and used over time, but as well as being advanced and improved upon. It's also thinking about the instructional design processes and models that were pioneered by Gagne, Glaser, Silvern, to think about what does instructional design mean as we move into the 1970s because there then becomes an increased interest in instructional design. It becomes added on through what many would consider the Gagne & Briggs model, the ADDIE model, and Dick & Carey model, that really incorporates previous knowledge to various hierarchical levels of learning, substantive formations of evaluation, of assessment, of learning how did all these things work together, but also continuing on in that dynamic and fluid way, so that it can always be improved upon as different learners come into play? As well as how do we then expand the applications of instructional design to various educational sectors, but also beyond that? It might have been pioneered within educational organizations and by that, I mean not just schools. Schools actually are one sector of an educational organization. There are those various institutions that comprise an educational sectors, so to talk about educational sectors broadly, but as well as how do we then, let's say, scale up applications of instructional design across different countries? What does it mean in that context? Because learning is different across different regions even within the United States if we think about that, and even within districts. Taking all that kinds of knowledge into account as the 1900s continues to incorporate elements of instructional design, it starts to gain a strong presence and obviously continued growth and business and industry. Now, business and industry, they have incorporated elements of social science advancements and some might say the development of the Henry T Ford Assembly line product was an advancement or that's questionable, but we'll say for our purposes and advancement in terms of how do we bring something like an automobile to a larger audience space, developed from this theory of efficiency that starts from business schools for example? But for instructional design, how does that come into play in business and industry, and those elements of providing content, knowledge to learners in various capacities? So, it's also then thinking about it in terms of the growth and the principles of cognitive psychology onto the instructional design process. How do we then incorporate that as well as scale up front that? Now, there was that thinking and maybe it was, let's see, 30 years ahead of its time, if we think about it. There was that grave belief that microcomputers or a personal computer for everyone, especially in schools, would solve so many different elements, especially if we think about the achievement gap in schools, or ensuring that as many kids can become equalized, and have access, and opportunities. Well, it was a really great idea, right? But we realized that well, sometimes just having technology does not equal automatic success, what we need to do is even when we have computer-based instruction, we need to have the right instruction and the right training available. I think that was a lesson to be learned from the 1980s. Even though that promise and the idea of it, I would say was very good, there were still elements in which the practice needed to really catch up with the technology available at the time. So then, towards the late 80s, you have the emergence of human performance technology. How do we then understand it through the interface of those elements together? It's also thinking about how does that human performance technology, what does it mean if we take a more careful analysis and needs assessment of gauging what performance means. As well as considering the non-instructional interventions to performance problems. Or to put it in another way to performance challenges let's say, more so than problems and/or opportunities, not performance problems but performance opportunities potential opportunities that's available for us to understand. It's also in the field of education where constructivism becomes very important but as well as an instructional design, here we have this new perspective on learning and instruction toward application. So constructivist way of thinking about it is a real life faced that say for ones that for our purposes as well, real life case study analysis of challenges, issues, problems, opportunities, that arise and how do we apply what we learn towards these real life scenarios as well as the element of Electronic Performance Support Systems which then decreases the need for training development but yet needing to figure out ways of how do we design and implement training mechanisms for a larger audience. That still becomes kind of the challenge that I think we are addressing at this point but it's also the emergence of rapid prototyping for however we want to think about it and what we might think in terms of the shortcomings I think these are the ways in which that it has evolved over time and of course there was continued reliance on computer-based training. I don't know how many of you remember CD-ROMs but certainly that was a revolutionary radical idea, we can compare that with the gramophone but these are also throughout and the 1990s wasn't that long ago, I remember it vividly, but yet is how do we think about these technologies the 8-track tapes. I know some of you might think about what in the world and 8-track tape well ask your parents or grandparents for some of you. You might even own one yourself. As we reach into the new millennium and a number of you might be the millennial generation, how do we then think about the popularity of e-learning mechanisms and corporate sectors for example. E-learning has really proliferated over the last couple of decades or the last decade or so to think of these systems, new application of technology also the new and expanded job opportunities for instructional designers, it's in many ways a relatively new field. Even though elements of that has been around for decades as we just previewed here, there's different ways of thinking about what does it mean to be an instructional designer and I hope that, that's one of the questions that will keep coming up for you. I think one of the important elements for this particular video segment is to say, "Okay, I got a little glimpse of what the history of instructional design is, well, how do I begin to think about it in a way that really considers the foundational elements of instructional design?" I think that's an important element to always be reflective about in whatever occupation that you get employment as well as the kinds of new knowledge and skills that will be required. This day and age it might be about different kinds of learning management systems, online course development as well as the kinds of delivery and management for instructional designers. Now, it also means leaning on the kinds of traditions and theories of those that we just were introduced to, to think about how do we maintain the fluidity and the dynamism of what is required in instructional design because as we know, technology is shifting over so rapidly. The kinds of conversations that I have with my own kids, it's very different than the conversations I had five years ago, mainly because their level of growth in technology and in the definition of terms has changed so rapidly. So, with that, it's also how do we grow and integrate the use of social media for learning and instruction as well as thinking about learning and instruction in informal ways also becoming lifelong learners. How do we do it in ways that helps us to continuously grow, learn, and adapt especially adapt to the changing needs of technology, of instructional design? And so what we've been seeing in the 2010s obviously, through this medium as well as I'm talking to you, is the increased use of blended learning from physically present to the online environment. Definitely, the personal smart mobile technology is ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and it's every day. Some of them could be a lot more expensive than others but hopefully it can become more accessible to everyone around but it's also thinking about the design of mobile-friendly training and instruction. Some of you might be listening to this on your personal mobile device, you might be on a subway, to your workplace or to school or wherever you might be but how do we then adapt our needs to the kinds of needs that you have based on the lifestyles that you also have as well? It's also in terms of higher education. Continued increase in online education and higher education for us, it's also thinking about how do we reach a broader audience so that they can also have opportunities to learn, to grow in a way that doesn't necessarily require you to be on campus. It's also increased the need to have diversification in training and professional development. Of course, this is a MOOC-based system that we have and that I'm talking to you today, but it's also an expanded ways in which I as a trained teacher trying to figure out new modes of ways to reach you, the learner. I'm still a learner myself I would consider myself a very new learner and very different elements of instructional design but yet I'm here to learn with you in that process but it also means how do we diversify our needs to train and to develop professionally as well as how do we then learn about and discern the kinds of big data that's coming through. How do we also develop that nuance and understanding of how did we gauge learner analytics because everything that we do on the Internet becomes trackable but how do we then understand those ways in which for instructional designers it helps those teaching and learning environments. And how do we then use that as a way to think about scaffolding that knowledge base, that criterion referenced learning-based so that it becomes a personalized learning experience. The world is diverse, you are diverse, you have also different ways of thinking about adaptive technologies, thinking about how we use technology the way and the cultures and the languages that we speak. We are so incredibly wonderfully diverse in that way. How do we then shift technology and learning to a way that becomes personal for you so that we can optimize those learning experiences for you in that regard. As we move on into the next decades into the rest of the 21st century, that will be your challenge as you continue to become or if you aspire to be instructional designers, but it's really about how do we incorporate those historical elements that we learn so that we don't necessarily repeat the mistakes, but yet how do we learn from and grow, and also assist in the revolution of learning and teaching through instructional design.
