Technology and Instructional Design in Education Began

¶ … technology and instructional design in education began during World War II. In this short essay, the author will evaluate its effectiveness in the post-war period.

As during the Second World War, many of the advances came about due to the need to educate soldiers and the public in the fight against the monolithic enemy of communism during the Cold War. Unlike during World War II, the Cold War was of indeterminate length. With no end in sight, the "race" between the U.S. dominated west and the Russian dominated east involved every bit of technology. Instructional technology (IT) as a field was no different.

During the war, films, film strips and other visual aids as well as audio equipment were necessary for the rapid and mass education of military personnel being trained to fight in World War II. Based upon these experiences and the perceived (as well as actual) successes in training U.S. military personnel during the war, interest persisted in instructional technology and design after the war as well (Reiser, 2001, p. 57).

During the decade after the war, several intensive studies of on audiovisual research were carried out in order to identify various attributes/features of how audiovisual materials affected learning. The goal behind this research was to identify attributes that could be used in certain situations. Such research tended to emphasize the technology. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these studies was compromised by the relative lack of distribution of data to the majority of educators at the time (Ibid).

During the 1950's, IT advocates became interested in theories or models of communication, a process that involved both the sender and the receiver of a message, the medium through which that message is to be sent. The model's authors indicated that during planning process for communication that it was necessary to think about all of the elements of process and not just the technology (Ibid, 58). Television made this technological milieu and joined with video technology and computers during the 1970's, 80's and during the 90's with the Internet as well. Unfortunately, the presence of technology by itself in the schools did not solve the problems of mass education. (Ibid, pp. 59-60).

The mixed results in the years after the war resulted in the application of behavioral theory to instructional technology to enhance its effectiveness, including the work of B.F. Skinner as well of Robert Mager. Mager's work brought about the use of objectives in IT (Reiser, 2001, p. 59) This lead in turn to the Criterion-Referenced Testing Movement to measure how well an individual can perform with regard to a particular behavior or set of behaviors and Robert M. Gagne and his Domains of Learning, Events of Instruction and Hierarchical Analysis. While behavioral approach focused IT, the deployment of Sputnik by the Soviets spurred a panic and the systems approach evolved to deal with this. Constructivist approaches also evolved that dealt with groups and the "real world." Technology has complicated this, bringing in the question of appropriate technology and the application of new technologies rapidly to various theorectical IT approaches. Knowledge management systems came out of the joining of behaviorist, constructivist and technological prototyping (Ibid, pp. 61-64).