EME 7938 STUDY QUESTIONS FOR GROUP 1 READINGS

General Directions: Answer each question to your satisfaction and submit according to the course schedule. Although I encourage you to respond in as much detail and at as much length as you find appropriate, please edit the documents that you send to me so that I receive comprehensive responses of no more than about 500 words for any single question. (Please note that 500 words is an absolute UPPER LIMIT for those who feel that they NEED to write that much. I'd much rather you submitted MUCH shorter responses, on the order of a paragraph or so per question.)

Reiser, R. (2001). A history of instructional design and technology: Parts I&II. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(1&2), 53-64 & 57-67.

Question 1: Define instructional design and technology.

Question 2: Develop a timeline of the major developments in the histories of instructional media and design. Identify the major technologies, design movements, and leaders in the fields of instructional media and design as well as their contributions to the fields of instructional media and design.

Question 3: What patterns of expectation and outcome are emerging from the discovery of these “revolutionary” technologies?

Hill, R. & Hannafin, M. (2001). Teaching and learning in digital environments: The resurgence of resource-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(3), 37-52.

Question 1: What is resource based learning?

Question 2: How has digital technology changed the way we teach and learn?

Question 3: What are the components of an RBLE?

Jonassen, D. (Ed.). (1996). Handbook of research for educational communications and technology. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-864663-0. Chapters 2, 5-7, & 9

Chapter 2: Behaviorism and Instructional Technology

Question 1: What are some of the general philosophies discussed in this chapter to establish a context for behaviorism?

Question 2: What is behaviorism and how has it influenced instructional technology?

Question 3: What is programmed instruction (PI) and how has it impacted instructional technology?

Chapter 5: Cognitive perspective in psychology

Question 1: What are introspection and Gestalt Theory? What is Schema theory and what has its role been in instructional technology?

Question 2: What are mental models and how have they influenced instructional technology? Which IT design practices have their foundations in cognitivism?

Question 3: What are the "ages" of scholarship in educational technology? Why must behaviorism no longer be allowed to serve as the dominant theory base for IT?

Chapter 6: Toward a sociology of educational technology

Question 1: What is sociology, what are its concerns, and how are they reflected in IT scholarship?

Question 2: What impact has technology had on society and education? What does research tell us about the effect that instructional technology has on educational efficiency?

Question 3: Which is potentially more important to human beings, IT direct effects on instruction or IT's social consequences: e.g. the ways that teachers change their assumptions about how a classroom looks and feels, how students interact when IT is thrown into the classroom mix, IT's effect on students as participants in civic life in a democracy, changes in distribution of power in schools, changes in school-community relationships, opportunities for social groups to change their status? How is this fact reflected in the body of IT research?

Chapter 7. Constructivism: Implications for the design and delivery of instruction.

Question 1: What are the fundamental principles of constructivism and who are some of the contributors to the philosophy? Is constructivism always “active” and behaviorism always “passive”?

Question 2: What are the three metaphors of mind that are discussed in this chapter? What is the relationship between constructivism and Problem-based learning?

Question 3: How should IT scholars conduct research on constructivist-based instructional designs?

Chapter 9: Critical theory and educational technology

Question 1: What is critical theory? Who is Habermas and what is Habermas’ Epistemology?

Question 2: How has critical theory been employed in IT research? To what kinds of problems has it been applied and what have been the outcomes?

Question 3: What are the current critical issues in, and recommendations for the future pursuit of, critical theory in IT research?