Recently in Instructional Design Category

Alice raises an interesting point about designing Gardner-like learning environments in educational settings other than college. More specifically, it reminded me of a post I recently read in another blog from an educational technologist, Will Richardson who focuses mostly on K-12 settings. He's actually based down near Phile and does quite a bit of consulting and presenting on topics generally related to re-designing K-12 settings. In one of his recent school presentations, he lamented the almost adversarial posture that a school seemed to have towards its technological resources. Rather than as an opportunity for outside-the-box approaches, they saw it as something that could bring much more detiment than benefit, and therefore, as something to warily monitor.

Recently, I presented at a school on an opening day for teachers where the first thing that greeted everyone on the table in the lobby was an 8-page Acceptable Use Policy which staff members were picking up as they filed into the school. I picked one up too, and when I had a moment ... [and] Frankly, I couldn't help thinking that if I was a student in this district, I think I would actually beg NOT to get a computer.

While, I don't think this example is representative of all K-12 settings, I have read about similar experiences in Richardson's blog and elsewhere. What I find striking in this anecdote is the year in which it takes place: 2009. I could see if it were the late 90s when internet-based technologies were comparatively young and not very well known, but now, in 2009, this seems like an approach that aims to push back educational technology to the days of drill-and-practice.

More broadly, it prompts me to think about whether instructional designers can lead wary K-12 teachers towards a more enlightened view? Should they? Does this 8-page Acceptable Use Policy perhaps mask a more substantive issue: an anxiey related to the uncertainties and ambiguities of what kind of learning environment and new interpretive meanings the studens might *construct* with these tools? What sorts of challenges and limitations does this comparatively new, extant document, the Acceptable Use Policy, present for instructional designers?

I've got to tip my hat to the level of candor used by Smith & Ragan when they discuss the controversy over what weight stakeholders should attach to a designer's Summative Evaluation.

Many educators believe that the instructional designer has a strong investment and consequent bias [emphasis added] to find the instruction effective. ... Others feel that no one knows the instructional program and its potential strengths and weaknesses better than the designer, and therefore the designer is in the best position to most efficiently design an evaluation ...

In this controversy, my argument would be to avoid rigid binaries. I think an organization (e.g., the client) would be better off to include the designer's perspective since, as Smith & Ragan note, she is very familiar with its many facets and details. Accounting for biases happens all the time in research journals and conferences and it seems reasonable that project decision-makers could borrow from this practice and modify it as needed so that potential points of bias are highlighted. Although there would be the additional cost of the designer writing the summative evaluation, it seems logical that the vast extensive knowledge the designer has of the project would be more than worth it.