Instructional design in academia–where theory and practice RARELY meet
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Instructional design in academia–where theory and practice RARELY meet.
dr.curry @ February 11, 2008
There’s no doubt that the theory of instructional design is different from the practice of instructional design and vice versa. I learned that immediately after being employed as an instructional designer for the first time.
To explain the difference between theory and practice, a M*A*S*H episode stuck with me - if you’re familiar with the show, it’s when Charles Winchester is first deployed; he’s used to the hospital environment and is quite unnerved by the fast-paced MASH setting and surgical practice.
In theory, surgery/instructional design happens in sterile environments with unconscious patients working at the doctor/ID’s pace. In reality - near the trenches of a conflict or classroom - we do meatball surgery/instructional design working with patients (faculty) that are often arguing against sound online learning best practices. ID in the trenches has to be fast and “just good enough” to allow us and our patients to survive the trauma. It’s messy; there are shortcuts, and it’s not always by the book.
HOWEVER, knowing the theory informs the practice; no matter how sloppy or quick it has to be, knowing the theory may make things go more smoothly and enable the practitioner to generate innovative ideas and approaches along the way.
I don’t think the theory is necessary to be an instructional designer, but I firmly believe an intelligent individual with a knack for instructional design will be a better instructional designer if they do engage formal training in the field.
-Chris “I survived Curry” Duke
http://www.muveforward.com
http://edtechatouille.blogspot.com
My Instructional Technology education gave me some terminology to better explain what I was doing. The theory is useful in “selling” our practice to others. I don’t know about other folks enviroments, but having that type of ammunition in my corporate environment has been invaluable.
David Merrill was saying the same thing 15 years ago (at least he was when we discussed this issue). I even used his initial CBT training software which was based on “proven” instructional design theory. The software was not very good.
As much as I respect Dr. Merrill, I haven’t seen a lot of advances in instructional design in the past decade. I remember when reusable learning objects were all the rage with the Cisco folks (and Merrill & Clark) and before that when Oracle, with its OLA, was going to change ISD big time. It didn’t.
The real disconnect, IMO, is between the Academy and the learners. Not only can any six year old splatter paint, but any six year old can learn. It takes standardized curriculum and instructional systems design to ensure that a six year old learns to hate school and associate this experience with learning.
Being new to the game I am not really sure how qualified I am to comment, but here it goes.
I got into education before I had ever had any formal training - I found my calling quite by accident. Now, the more I am exposed to the educational environment, the more I realize what is wrong (and right!) with it. I am in the process of completing my masters in Ed Tech and am looking specifically at the engineering educational environment. One comment you made struck me as so very true in all fields…teachers seem to teach the way they were taught (”Why? Well, my professors did.”) Unfortunately, the more we learn about human learning, the more we (I) realize that it isn’t always the best way.
Now, I have been through the ID courses and I know the theories (Ok, sort of!) and I do believe they are useful in defining the process. But no matter how good the process/model is, if there are not competent, passionate, and dedicated teachers on the other end, then it is all for not. If I design a remarkable learning experience and then the instructor delivers it in a dry, monotone way, then all my hard work is wasted.
Like all disciplines, whether it be ID or engineering, what we teach must be meaningful to the people learning it. The theories and models are needed to deal with the “politics” while the passion and desire are needed for the delivery. So while practice and reality may be distinctly different, both are needed for the whole process to work.
I’m a firm believer in the idea of “never enough knowledge”. The more we learn, the better we know our field. At the same time:
1) Learning has to come from many sources. If we stick exclusively to theory, we’ll be unprepared to break out of the sterile academic environment and actually put our knowledge into practice. Learning must include a wide variety of opinions and backgrounds, as well as real-world experience.
2) We’ve all been students, so we know what Instructional Designers often subject us to. I think anyone involved in the field has the built-in ability to recognize good ID, even though they may not be able to explain why it’s good. Thus, given enough time and exposure to feedback, I think we can all become decent designers.
I’ve been involved with e-learning for 6 or 7 years now and have seen all sorts of projects come and go. My background is in business, not training or technology, so I tend to naturally focus on business outcomes - productivity, profitability, etc. However, I feel I have picked up a great deal of theory - thank you bloggers of the world! - to complement my practical experience. Often I get lost in the details, skipping over academic references I’ve never heard of and vocabulary that is obscure at best, but in the end I generally get the gist of the topic. And while learning about this or that model is generally not something I can directly apply, I have no doubt the added knowledge makes me a better designer.
Rats! I wish I’d had something like this to use towards a paper I recently submitted on my postgrad course. I was exploring whether or not it was necessary for trainers to have an understanding of learning theory/pedagogy in order to do their jobs effectively. This would have added an extra dimension. What I have found is that many people intuitively employ the practices/models (or at least many of their principles) put forward by theorists whose names we speak in hushed tones, and they see no need to know any more than that.
I vacillate on the subject, but I will suggest that the theorists did not invent their theories from out of the ether. They presumably based them on research into successful existing practice, much of which would have been intuitively applied before the theory was introduced to tell them why it was a good idea to do what they were already doing.
Oh dear, what a convoluted sentence!
Linear and Nonlinear Instructional Design
May I suggest that it is not Instructional Design that is the issue in your article? What you are talking about is the difference between linear and nonlinear Instructional Design. Linear ID was created and supported by the US Military to train soldiers. Only to train soldiers. ID has spilled over into corporate training and now distance learning. The difference in military, corporate training, and distance learning is that the military actually cares if the soldier learns the training content. Going for training in the corporation is more of an indicator of success than what is learned. This culminates when they reached top management and receive a week at Harvard Business School. Distance learning is just a trick to make money for textbook conglomerates and universities. They will now be able to fire faculty on mass.
Linear Training
Linear theory in Instructional Design is very clear and straightforward when applied to military training. The only challenge for us as ID specialists is to become a devotee to a particular ID model. This usually depends on our professor’s devotion.
I know the damage these linear ID models do to learning and instruction will be very clear when compared to Nonlinear Instructional Design Theory. This theory has been created by David Morris because I was able to become the content specialist. I am a Professor of Marketing with a Ph.D. in Instructional Design from Syracuse. I began as an assistant professor of marketing without having ever taken one course in business. When I first began to teach marketing and looked at the marketing textbooks, I thought how could these people get away with this theft.
Wisdom and Instructional Design
I immediately applied the ADDIE model to marketing. It just did not fit because ADDIE, marketing, all business content and practice are linear. I solved this as a visiting marketing professor at Trinity College in Ireland. I began by putting ADDIE across the top of the page and then searching through the textbooks to find the equivalent ideas in marketing. What did the marketing textbooks think represented analysis? What did they think design was in marketing? And so on.
This can just not be done. It is impossible applying a linear ID model to ever changing linear marketing content and processes. In a conversation with an Irish Professor he said keep the ADDIE process stable for all marketing and business content. Bingo nonlinear Instructional design theory began. Marketing and all other content became simply the story that is told applying ADDIE. I added three more concepts to ADDIE to incorporate all storytelling content. I created the nonlinear model of CSDADDIE by adding C cosmology, S storytelling, and D direction. This now incorporates all known and unknown content to a common process.
What happened over my career is that my linear instructional design professors that I admire and learned a great deal from had no idea of what I was suggesting. My fellow linear marketing professors began to see this CSDADDIE model as a threat because they could not justify all the changes in processes in their courses. A new top administration came in to run the university like a business. The business model of training was just wonderful because not one student is accountable in industry for what they learn in marketing. They are only accountable for the memorization of useless content and processes.
I was informed, that I must return to teaching my students the exact textbook content applying rote memory. If I did not I would be accused, moved, or even fired for not teaching marketing. To accomplish this they made plans to unify my marketing course content with all the professors. All groups of students with their different professor would then receive the same textbook tests. If it was found that any professor’s students did not perform, equally well on the same test that professor would be rehabilitated.
For me, textbook testing consisted of student memorization of all the 50 plus changes in marketing processes in one textbook. I took the textbook test myself after 20 years of teaching marketing and failed. I wrote an essay on this and asked my fellow professors in the world to take the test. I was not suggesting that other professors must do as I was doing. That was their decision. However, I thought it would be enlightening for them to see the harm they were causing.
I suggested to our president that to force textbook sales through testing on my students was against my religious beliefs. I also suggested that for any institution of higher education to support textbook use while benefiting from the huge revenues generated may come to be considered immoral.
If interested in learning more about nonlinear Instructional Design applied to content that is simply defined through its story please go to my websites. If you wish to comment or join me, I will be happy to work with you.
http://www.marketingandstorytelling.com
http://www.digitalinstructionaldesign.com
David Morris, Ph.D.
Professor of Marketing
University of New Haven
The gap between ISD theory and practice is not unlike gaps in other fields, I think. I’ve heard my step-father, a retired (many yrs ago) engineer with Shell say that when hiring newly minted engineers, they had to be trained to do the job. It’s a constant struggle in any program of study to keep it connected to the field of practice. My point is that the field of instructional design is like many others in that respect, but also to point out that in all these fields it is important to continually strengthen the connection between the program of study and the field in which the graduate will be expected to function. This is slightly different from the (dis)connection of theory and practice, but related.
I do instructional design and from time to time I teach instructional design. But I only had one course, strictly speaking, in ISD in the doctoral program. It was quite valuable — familiarizing the terminology, providing me an overview of the field, and forcing me to work through one project in a more systematic way than I would have otherwise. I’ve learned more about the field — the theories, the history, the names, etc… — through further readings and through teaching. That’s all background, but occasionally a problem with a project will make me reflect a bit and sometimes I’ll find a solution in all that theory.
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After 18 years of commercial design and development practice I came to an academic position and soon discovered that one of the problems among designers is their use of the word “theory”. The word bears the image of science, and no one could explain to me what “theory” was to a designer. I have pursued this question at length, and I have become convinced that theory is something different for designers. I have documented that position in an occasional paper titled “The Practice of Instructional Technology” available at the AECT Web site (if you are a member) and from me personally on request. A recorded talk on the subject is free for download at: http://www.archive.org/details/OpenEd2005AStructuralApproachRelatingInstructionalTheoryandInstructionalDesignTheory
Let’s open a discussion on this subject and help instructional designers think like designers rather than scientists.
I agree with the fact that ISD is a constant struggle in any program of study. Therefore, a very well established strategy is needed in order to keep the design of the instruction connected to the field of practice. However, how many instructors are able to do this and how much support do they get from the institutions they work for? We agree on the fact that the theories aren’t enough if we cannot put them into practice. They are strictly interrelated and for an effective and efficient strategy we need both of them. The practice of instruction is actually what gives life to the theories.
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John, I’ve found this post interesting enough to blog it. In short, while I like Merrill’s search for common ground (though I note that he’s gone through two different theories himself, CDT and then ID2 :), I think you need to know some of the underlying learning theories to fill in gaps where principle clashes with pragmatics. Cammy, I’ll suggest, ‘gets it’ because she’s continually reflecting, and I can’t say I see that in a lot of ID out there. So I’ll put my money on either a reflective practitioner OR someone schooled with the theories (NB: where they *apply* it, not just recite it). Good topic!
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Thank you, Dr. Curry!
~Jenise
Interesting I came across this when I was researching on Instructional Design for the purpose of pursuing a master’s program in IDD.
Very often, i’ve been confused by what role an instructional designer plays in an institution. I once interned at a college where the Instructional designer doubled responsibilities; as an instructor, grader, proof-reader, technical troubleshooter and this made me wonder what really should be the role of an instructional designer in real world?
[...] actually played. BINGO! This is exactly what has happened to instructional design, and could by why theory and practice don’t meet. So much theory has been introduced that we can no longer see how instruction is actually designed. [...]
[...] is exactly what has happened to instructional design, and could by why theory and practice don’t meet. So much theory has been introduced that we can no longer see how instruction is actually designed. [...]