How to get an Instructional Design education without paying tuition
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How to get an Instructional Design education without paying tuition.
dr.curry @ February 13, 2008
John, wonderful, wonderful list.
Here’s my two cents’ on this topic; it’s a beef with many instructional designers today.
I think many instructional designers use their knowledge of instructional-design theories and models to make the conversation about learning today smaller rather than bigger, especially about new technologies.
I think there are conversations about new information, communication, and entertainment technologies that instructional designers, by and large, don’t participate in.
My conversations with instructional designers about search (Google), video (YouTube), immersive environments (Second Life), social networking (Facebook), games, blogging, wikis, etc., etc, typically consist of the instructional designer frowning and saying, “That’s not instruction,” or, “That doesn’t fit with what we know about good instruction.”
Instructional-design theories and models seem to create partisanship, kind of like a French chef who doesn’t have anything to say about pizza because it’s not French cooking.
So we have these short, this-does-not-fit-the-tradition-I-was-raised-in conversations.
I never hear anyone say anything conceptually pluralistic like, “I come from a Gagne perspective so I don’t see Google as a learning tool because it’s not instruction, but I can see from a performance-support perspective how it’s the world’s biggest learning tool.”
Or, “I come from an instructivist perspective and think in terms of delivery, so I don’t think of Second Life as an instructional platform, but I can see how constructivists are interested in learners constructing 3D experiences in Second Life.”
I think it’s fair to ask, what do others know about instructional design.
But I think it’s also fair to ask, what do instructional designers know about game design theory, information design theory, performance-support design theory, social network theory, and so forth.
So that when we encounter different world-views in our field it’s the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it.
End of rant. Thanks again for the great list.
Maybe including competencies of an instructional designer would be a good addition to the list? The International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction (ibstpi.org) published the “Instructional Design Competencies” (2001) by Richey, Fields, & Foxon that I use.
Dr. John — what a daunting list! Where is a poor girl to begin? Frankly, I think I’d have to be in a program in order to maintain the discipline and focus to get through it all. What are the basics? Whittle it down even more for me…
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Hi Dr. Curry,
Thank you for your list. It looks like I have a lot of reading to do.
Although I cannot claim I am an “instructional designer,” I design instruction daily at the front lines of public education in the classroom.
IMHO, there is no other method to mastery in any field than apprentice with a master or several masters and then practice, practice, practice.
So who are the masters?
Here’s a list of several of my favorites:
Physlrnr - a listserv of dynamic physics educators discussing what works at the cutting edge of science education.
VanTH/ERC - an engineering research consortium between Vanderbilt, Northwestern, MIT and Harvard promoting challenge-based bioengineering curriculum development based on the “How People Learn” Legacy Cycle.
Concord Consortium - a group dedicated to deep, persistent understandings through the use of interactive math and science visualization tools
One might argue that these are domain specific, but I would point them to your idea so well expressed above:
“What Engineers Know and How They Know it, by Walter G. Vincenti. A book on how engineers solve design problems. After all, aren’t we educational engineers?”
Ciao,
Gregory
Have you see this ( http://www.bookstoread.com/e/et/top10id.htm ) which is the Top 10 ID books from some of the leaders in ID?
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Doesn’t a list of books dismiss the whole idea of a need to practice and experience to enhance learning? It’s a bit of a putoff….
Wow that is quite a list.However it is helpfull one for a novice like me staying in country that has few programmes for Instructional designing.