Ed's Reflections for IU courses

One of the articles was about how companies advertise job openings in the educational technology or instructional design field. The article highlighted how these fields can be described in numerous ways in job openings and what some of the current responsibilities are for those positions. It was interesting to see how job descriptions pull pieces from the different fields making it unclear which field it is referring to and what skills are truly needed.  Do HR departments really understand the difference? The authors believed that there will be many new positions that will be created as a result of online learning. There were some key skills that were discussed such as project management, design, graphic design, multimedia, and technology management that were identified as wording that is frequently used in these job descriptions. A chart was used to show the types of jobs based on the title compared to the duties and responsibilities for that title. I think this shows how much overlap there is and difficult it is to write a description based on a field name. Instructional design jobs selection, for example, relied heavily on responsibilities, requirements, and qualifications. While other positions focused on abilities and skills or preferences for a specific product experience when choosing a candidate. (Basdogan & Bonk, 2020)

Gabrielli and Branson’s (2012) article on “Getting a Job in Business and Industry”, described some principles that would have been great to know when I was in high school getting ready to venture in the adult world. I don’t remember my guidance counselor telling me anything about gaining experience by looking into the field that I think I want to study. Of course, the technology at the that time was primitive compared to today. It is unbelievable that there was no internet or other technologies to reach anyone in the country without a hefty long-distance phone bill or writing a letter. I think some of the advice would have been for a person to make sure his or her passion could generate income if that person planned to do it as a career.

Obviously, technology advances such as social media aid in the search for jobs and suitable candidates. It was funny to see that some of the selection process asked if the potential employee would be a problem to manage. In this age, image is everything. It seems that you can be qualified on paper but not qualified if your social media page had outrageous information or pictures that could damage a potential employer reputation or image. I believe the rest of the article addressed the job search, resume and interview tips to increase opportunities for interviews and job offers. (Gabrielli & Branson, 2012) There are things that are easily forgotten when a person is in a position for a long time or with organizations that move people up internally within the section or department. In my years with the military, I had to interview only a few times for a position and even then I had to be completely unmotivated to be turned down since there was a shortage of people for those positions. 

Overall, this week’s readings revealed some potential positions and levels of responsibilities required in the fields of instructional design, educational technology to name a few. I also see how these positions end up in HR. Many of these positions have management of projects and some type of training development. I would like to see more of these positions incorporated into departments that could use training to develop the workforce and increase shared understanding of company processes and procedures.

Basdogan, M., Ozdogan, Z., & Bonk, C. J. (2020). Understanding the diverse field of “educational technology” as revealed in Twitter job postings: Encoding/decoding approach. The Qualitative Report, 25(8), 2044-2066. Available: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol25/iss8/3

Gabrielli, G. K., & Branson, R. K. (2012). Getting a job in business and industry. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3^rd ed.) (pp. 263-272). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

This week’s reading about the educational technology at a bachelor’s level was interesting. Maybe this is needed to fill the gap in many organizations who only have educational technologists or instructional design professionals in HR. Other business departments could use instructional designers to shape the workforce with the required information to be consistent on product knowledge and to develop employee skills that are needed to maximize productivity. It is strange to have to thinking about how to use instructional design for an instructional design major. I think before the architecture is designed; the researcher needs to know what the expected job outcome would be. Also, job sector needs to considered for general requirements if it is not in junior or senior years. The students will need to know if their interest is in business or educational field. One of the biggest elements for success will be internships that will allow students to apply learning into an authentic environment. (Ritzhaupt & Kang, 2017)

Our readings also took us to articles that discussed what an instructional designer should be doing especially in the educational field. The authors (Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2017) believed a review of instructional designer job field was required to see how the skills match with the most up-to-date requirements. It was highlighted that the focus of an instructional designer was different as it related to education and business. The first concentrated on planning projects while the other dealt with client’s interest. Surveys were given to ID professionals who responded with what they were doing in their organizations. In the education field (higher education), many ID professionals were responsible for course development and support to students, teachers, and faculty. (Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2017)

Kumar, S. & Ritzhaupt, A. D. (2017). What do instructional designers in higher education really do? International Journal of E-Learning, 16(4), 371-393.

Ritzhaupt, A. D. & Kang, Y. (2015). Are we ready for bachelor’s degrees in educational technology: Perceptions from the field and a proposal? Educational Technology, 55(3), 14-22.

This is an interesting topic especially since I am going through my ethics and compliance training at my organization. The readings have brought up some interesting points between discrimination and preferential treatment. So, discrimination is when a person is intentionally turned down because of gender, race, or other factors even when they are qualified. Preferential treatment is when the person should have been turned down based on qualifications but was given the opportunity because of some similar characteristic (friends of the family, in the same group or organization, etc.). (Banaji, Bazerman, & Chugh, 2003)

Wow, I guess we are all guilty on the second one. I feel this one is a treaty one that businesses have been doing as regular process. I work in the IT field, and it seemed almost impossible to get an interview. I happened to meet some people who worked for the organization that I wanted to apply to, and they referred me to the hiring manager. This seemed like the only way to have an opportunity to demonstrate that I am qualified. I have also seen this with job postings that were going to be filled internally but because regulations required a minimal posting window to the public. How can you change this process and still give internal employees a chance for promotion? More importantly, is this ethical?

To further examine some of my unconscious biases, I did take one of the Implicit Association Tests for gender and career. The test suggested a moderate automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family. (Project Implicit (harvard.edu)) Looking at my family life, I can easily see why I would think that way unconsciously.

I thought back to my years in the military. Every military organization that I had been in a variety of people and a great mix in gender. That was not the case for some of organizations that were in the combat arms skills (infantry soldiers, tank drivers, etc.) where there were no women or generally no people of color. As you may expect, the first time that individual was in a position that had either of these situations, it took a long time to break unconscious biases.

It was eye-opening to see how and why ethical became a part of educational technology. Many of the early theorists were in positions that allowed them to contribute to the field. From a historical perspective, it made me think about how many people may have been denied the opportunity to contribute to this field because of the social and political environments at that time. (Bradshaw, 2018) It also makes sense to examine the purpose of the information that is being taught to the audience. In this case, I am referring to the use of educational technology with misinformation. With so many learning theories, they could easily be used to relay a desired behavior or certain content to affect a group’s understanding of an issue. Now with more access to technology, people have a chance or choice to see what is out there and provide their own perspective on the topic.

Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003, December). How (un)ethical are you? Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 56-65.

Bradshaw, Amy C. (2018, March 23). Reconsidering the instructional design and technology timeline through a lens of social justice. TechTrends, 62, 336-344.

This was another interesting week of articles.  I have seen how blended learning has advanced throughout the decade.  Most of my degrees have had some sort of blended learning to accommodate the needs of students.  Some courses have used in person combined with live on-line with other asynchronous methods to deliver course content.  I have also seen instances of blended learning in my military career.  As the technology has advanced, the military shift to blended learning has increased. 

Some of the articles we have read this week highlighted that blended learning is just as effective as face-to-face and that satisfaction was higher than for e-learning courses.  This makes sense since interaction with classmates is an important element in learning. It was surprising to see how other countries viewed blended learning.  In the late 2000’s, US was the leader in using blended learning in the workplace at about 75 percent while some Asian countries were below 50 percent in blended learning usage.  (Kim, Bonk, & Teng, 2009) I don’t think blended learning is the answer for improving learning until the content or material is assessed.  I have seen online content in some of my previous courses that was not related to the face-to-face information presented by instructors.  The disconnected material made it hard to know what to expect for assignments. 

Other than enrolling in courses that used blended learning, I have enrolled in several massive online open courses.  I think these courses are great for learning a unique skill for free. Some of the courses offer the opportunity to get a certificate but for a small fee.  This is helpful if you need to indicate that you have had verifiable training on a topic.  I was fascinated by the categories of MOOCs.  I had never thought about the courses from any other perspective but my own.  I am currently doing a course through edX in which I go through the modules, take quizzes throughout, and submit a project to be graded by the course instructors for final assessment.  Obviously, there is no pressure to complete but this is probably one of the disadvantages of this type of educational technology.  There can be thousands of people around taking this course at once while working fulltime.  Other life events take priorities so staying on pace becomes difficult. (Bonk, Lee, Reeves, & Reynolds, 2018) I think next time I will try to take a course with a friend or co-worker so that we push each other to complete and challenge each other to learn more. 

I think it is appropriate to address blended learning and educational technology with HPT.  I believe there has to be a human element to the instruction that is required to keep students motivated and a method to access material at any time to facilitate learning in both a school and work environments. 

References:

Bonk, C. J., Lee. M. M., Reeves, T. C., & Reynolds, T. H. (2018). The emergence and design of massive open online courses. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4^th Ed.), (pp. 250-258). New York, NY: Pearson Education. Preprint available: http://www.publicationshare.com/3 or: http://publicationshare.com/pdfs/MOOCs_Reiser_book_by_Bonk_Reeves_Reynolds_Lee_Final_with_citation.pdf

Kim, K.-J., Bonk, C. J., & Teng, Y.-T. (2009, August). The present state and future trends of blended learning in workplace learning settings across five countries. Asia Pacific Education Review (APER), 10(3). (or perhaps something more specific: Teng, Y.-T., Bonk, C. J., & Kim, K.-J. (2009, February). The trend of blended learning in Taiwan: Perceptions of HRD practitioners and implications for emerging competencies. HRD International, 12(1), 69-84.

This week’s readings were interesting to me because my undergraduate degree is in psychology.  The articles reminded me of industrial and organizational psychology courses I took some time ago.   I feel that I/O psychology and Human Performance Technology are similar because they focus on influencing or improving behavior in the workplace by reviewing current procedures and implementing processes to affect overall performance to increase productivity and to improve individual and group performance.  (Cherry, 2019) 

It is hard to believe that this field is so young.  I thought that some of these elements would have come from behaviorism in which the learner’s desired behavior is the ultimate outcome for the instruction.  In the case of HPT, it is the environment that is examined so that obstacles can be removed to improve learning and increase performance.  I guess this could be considered environmental approach to learning.  If the distraction or barriers are removed, then learning should also improve. 

Some of the early pioneers had slightly different views on HPT.  Robert Mager’s three principles wanted learners to show performance by achieving a certain standard under certain conditions.  I think this is interesting since some of our theories had indicated the learning was for us to fit into our environment. This HPT concept talks about setting up the right environment for the student to learn the required information. (Wilmoth et al.,2010). This makes me think that the current environment of standardized testing that needs improving.  Can standardized testing be taken in an actual environment?  What if standardized test like GRE were taken in context of real-life events? 

In addition to Mager’s model, Rummler’s nine principles with three levels were of interest.  This model seems very familiar with the consideration of the organization, processes, and people.  I feel the effects at work when one of more of these levels is not in sync.  (Wilmoth et al.,2010). Gilbert’s behavior engineering model on the other hand, looks at six influences of behavior that affect performance.  The first three (date, instruments, incentives) are grouped under the environment while the other three (knowledge, capacity, ad motives) deal with the people themselves.  I believe these were easy to understand to flow into everything we are incorporating with the learning theories.  This is fascinating because anyone of these factors can significantly change learning.  If the incentives being offered are the not the right ones, then the person may not be motivated to learn or perform.  Another example could be that the individual does not have the knowledge to use the equipment or tools so learning to perform a task is ineffective.  (Van Tiem et al, 2004)

References:

Cherry, K., (2019). The basics of Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-industrial-organizational-psychology-2795302.

 
Van Tiem, D. M., Mosely, J. L., & Dessinger, J. C. (2004). Performance technology-defined. In D. M. Van Tiem, J. L. Moseley, & J. C. Dessinger (Eds.), Fundamentals of performance technology (pp. 2-20). Washington, DC: International Society for Performance Improvement.

Wilmoth, F. S., Prigmore, C., & Bray, M. (2010). HPT models. In R. Watkins & D. Leigh (Eds.), Handbook of improving performance in the workplace, vol. 2: Selecting and implementing performance interventions (pp. 5-26). Silver Spring, MD: International Society for Performance Improvement.

The readings this week talked about technology influenced educational instruction and design trends from the past and current environments.  It was amazing to read about technology predictions from the 1990’s and how they have come to fruition in the 2010’s.  Obviously, technology has been the highlight these past couple years with the pandemic.

Teachers transitioned to on-line and hybrid approaches because the pandemic made it necessary to do so.  Not sure if it was a successful one for some of the classrooms.  (Bonk, 2020) My children weren’t the only ones struggling to understand the technology.  Teachers who had never trained on the technology could not sustain it while teaching.  With technology comes challenges.  I was in graduate school when the pandemic shut down face-to-face learning and went to on-line only.  We had about 75 students but 5 to 6 supporting IT staff to deal with the inevitable issues that were going to occur when everyone is using the technology at one time (Zoom, Canvas, etc.). School districts did not have this support.  It was even worse when they went to hybrid face-to-face with online.  Not only did the teachers have to address technology issues and online students but also in-class student issues. 

It was also fascinating to see the focus on synchronous learning and little effort on asynchronous.  I guess this approach would have been tough because teachers’ involvement would be significantly reduced.  Even during the pandemic, I still saw public schooling aimed at curriculum-focused learning.  It seemed like grades did not matter as much, as long as students performed to a minimum standard and passed tests.  Could this have been a time to experiment with learning methods and new technology to see which ones best fit the students?  As highlighted by readings, the human element was missing during this time of on-line learning.  Many students suffered grade wise and socially from not seeing friends and classmates which I believe had a drastic impact on learning. (Bonk, 2020) Adding to that was the challenging environment of the home.  I can’t imagine children learning at home with all of the distractions. 

Our weekly readings also provided a spotlight on informal learning design.  It indicated some exciting principles that I believe could have been a great addition to the formal learning that was presented by public schools. The principles highlighted concepts such as giving students learning choices, using group activities, selecting problem-based activities, and utilizing gamification as tools to encourage learning.  (Martinez & Whiting, 2021, pg.). Another article conveyed some of the thoughts I had about technology and instructional design advancement this past decade.  It states the educators who don’t know how to use the technology itself, won’t know how to integrate it into instruction. So even though it was good to read about the trends, it was somewhat disappointing to not see better use of technology to improve student-centered learning. (Misha & et al., 2009)

References:

Bonk, C. J. (2020). Pandemic ponderings, 30 years to today: Synchronous signals, saviors, or survivors? Distance Education, 41(4), 589-599. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1821610

Martinez, S., & Whiting, J. (2021). Designing informal learning environments. In J. K. McDonald & R. E. West (Eds.), Design for learning: Principles, processes, and praxis. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/id/designing_informal

Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., & Kereluik, K. (2009). The song remains the same: Looking back to the future of educational technology. TechTrends, 53(5), 48-53.

This week’s readings have brought together an interesting mix of theory and technology advancements. From videos to on-line courses, it is amazing technology has changed the presentation of information to facilitate learning. I enjoy the concept of free open on-line courses. I have taken a few when I have had that whim to learn something interesting. I don’t have a teaching background but I can appreciate the use of technology to provide the course work in an interesting format for students. In our weekly reading, I gain a good sense of the advancement of this technology as each tool faded. (Bonk & Wiley, 2020) It was amazing to see how a major crisis can pull in the current technology and test its capabilities and challenge current learning theories. As I saw my kids go from in-class learning to hybrid and complete on-line learning, I was reminded what kind of event is required to keep this technology in the spotlight for the purpose of education.

I enjoyed reading the other articles on how the military used research on learning theories and technology to shape the training of people. Countries used the technology of the era to train large populations of people particularly for combat. Of course, these countries also used this technology to spread a desired message to unify a country. (Molenda, 2008) I have studied military innovation in times of transition between wars but never from the learning perspective. It is an irony though that institutions that could have benefitted the most, made the least progress; our public school systems and higher educational institutions. It would seem that budget cuts prevented schools from experimenting with instructional design. As highlighted by Dr. Reiser (2018) in his article, conditions were and probably still favorable for private business and the military. (Reiser, 2018)

Ed

Bonk, C. J., & Wiley, D. (2020). Preface: Reflections on the waves of emerging learning technology. Educational Technology Research and Development (ETR&D), 68(4), 1595-1612. DOI 10.1007/s11423-020-09809-x.  

Molenda, M. (2008). Historical foundations. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. V. Merriënboer, & M. P. Driscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3^rd ed.) (pp. 3-20). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Reiser, R. A. (2018). A history of instructional design and technology. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4thed.) (pp. 8-22). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

We have been covering many similar theories for the last month.  So, I was interested to see some of the older concepts in our readings.  Interesting reading the sociocultural aspect of learning.  Authentic learning has been the topic of our discussions for a few weeks in another one of my courses. I thought about the statement presented by the authors in our weekly reading, “If learning is predominantly a sociocultural dialogic, then instruction should provide opportunities for embedding learning in authentic tasks leading to participation in a community of practice.” (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998, pgs. 26) How real should the learning be?  How do you cover all scenarios for a group of learners? I think learning in a group is a great way to expand thought about a subject.  I enjoy group learning because it exposes me to experiences that I most likely would not have come up otherwise. In this course, how I view a topic is changed not just because of the interaction with instructors but more importantly with fellow students spread out throughout the US and world.   

Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD) was another interesting concept that makes sense today as it did in the 1990’s.  I translated ZPD to mean that you learn from the things in your environment including distanced sources such as on-line.  So, if you went to high school in a region with resources to have the latest educational practices and with plenty of educational resources, your learning experience will be vastly different from that of another person who did not have this environment or tools. This is a difficult one to overcome since children don’t have a choice to where they go to school. This is also the case for adults based on education level, income level, and cognitive abilities.  On-line resources provide the opportunity to learn anything a person chooses within cognitive capability and desire.  Of course, there was another place back in the day that did the same thing: Library. (Bonk & Cunningham, 1998, pgs. 32-39)

Even with exposure to various environments, learners must choose what interests them.  I think the comparison on learning knowledge deeply and traditional classroom practices in our readings summed up some interesting concepts.  For deep learning, a person must relate the new information with previous knowledge or experiences.  The process also describes how the learner must understand the information, evaluate it and reflect on the understanding (apply).  This is in contrast to traditional classroom learning in which information is unrelated to previous knowledge and memorized. (Sawyer, 2006)

References

Bonk, C. J., & Cunningham, D. J. (1998). Chapter 2: Searching for learner-centered, constructivist, and sociocultural components of collaborative educational learning tools. In C. J. Bonk, & K. S. King (Eds.), Electronic collaborators: Learner-centered technologies for literacy, apprenticeship, and discourse (pp. 25-50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The new science of learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 1-16). New York: Cambridge University Press.

I think this week promoted the concept that learning doesn’t really occur until it is applied to an environment.  Even then, it is different because it could change meaning slightly in various environments depending on the learner’s experience.  The amount of learning also is affected by the lack of proper environment for context.

Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) mentioned situated knowledge which I understood to mean learning in the environment that the topic will be utilized in.  People use knowledge differently thus people learn differently because of this reason. (Brown & et al., 1989) I find this to be an interesting statement but true.  We are all taking the same course but each of us is learning something different depending on how we plan to use the knowledge. 

Another great example was learning vocabulary words in context not just from a dictionary or vocabulary list.  Studies have shown that more vocabulary words would retain if used in context not just presented from a list for the purpose of testing.  I think this explains why children who don’t read regularly might struggle on standardized tests.  The vocabulary words are not seen or used often in context to promote learning them.  (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989)

In another article, authentic tasks were addressed.  I think this again solidified that those activities associated to a course (testing and practice work) should relate to the real-use environment.  The four G’s (generated, gathered, grouped, and given) were mentioned to highlight how online course but potentially most learning today was similar to the commercial industry in that information is generated, relevant resources are gathered into content, then this information is grouped for weekly presentations and finally given to the class for use.   This model would be counter to authentic learning approaching. (Herrington, 2006) I argue though that this may be a necessary step in the authentic learning approach because some kind of structure needs to be in place to address learner and instructor expectations.  Other activities within this structure can include authentic learning tasks to allow learner exploration into real-world situations. 

Reference

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning.Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Herrington, J. & Oliver, R. (2000). An instructional design framework for authentic learning environments. ETR&D, 48(3), pp. 23-48.

I believe Mayer and Moreno (2010) hit on something that I have always been fascinated with.  Why do people in the same course learn differently?  We all have varied capacity to absorb and process information.  Things like person experience, interest and purpose affect on level of understanding. I found the assumptions mentioned to also be interesting because they highlight how verbal and visual information need to be presented at the right pace for the learner.  Active learning definitely is more challenging.  To take the information and apply immediately takes practice.  At times, though, I think taking in more verbal and visual actually help reduce cognitive overload.  I believe I can see this when learning a language.  It is easier to learn when pictures and verbal instruction occur together.  Even better, though, is immersion into the language environment in which visual cues may increase verbal retention of the language. 

I can see how someone can be overloaded though.  I feel overloaded when I have to read many pages of boring text or unfamiliar information with no diagrams or figures in it.  I struggle to go back constantly to ensure I understood major concepts.  For me to concentrate on learning, I must have a quiet place with no other visual stimulus.  If not, I have to go back and try to remember key information before I can go forward and understand the content.  The authors illustrated some of the other scenarios in which overload can occur.  I have been to meetings when the presenter shows information on the board but talks about something else.  It becomes hard to comprehend the information, resulting in many questions to bring visual and verbal back in line. 

Some of the solutions are promising for future learning practices.  The article mentions off-loading with narration of topics.  I believe this is how we learned before we could read and write.  Parents would read the story to their young children who remembered after hearing it a few times.  Audio books or narratives on the topic may help adults learn quicker.  I particularly like creating stories with the information to make it more understandable. It becomes my own little narrative that I can verbalize and visualize. 

Mayer, R. E., and Moreno, R. (2003). Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38: 1, 43 — 52