POST 5: Section 5: Trends and Issues

Chapters in Section V identify trends and issues in IDT in various contexts: business and industry; military; health care education; P-12 education; and post-secondary education. Select at least 3 of these 5 contexts and compare/contrast the IDT trends and issues. Then explain how they are similar or different from the IDT trends and issues in the context in which you work.

   In my fifth post I will be covering issues and trends related to business and industry, health-care education, and P-12 education.

   Instructional designers today must embrace more than simply producing instruction. The affiliation includes analyzing human performance problems, identifying their root causes, coming up with solutions for these root causes, and finally incorporating these solutions to actually fix the issues at hand.

Business and industry

   There are many issues for an ID to be aware of related to business and industry. Allow me to focus on a couple. The biggest factor facing all these contexts is that of time. Every client wants their problem fixed yesterday. When time is not on your side as an ID you will feel the constraints that include a lack of time,

lack of support from your client, and a lack of money to provide everything the ID needs to accomplish the job. ID may be working solo or as part of a team. No matter what the setup, always be ready to prove your wares with a specific proposal that dictates what you believe it will take to produce the optimal ID product.      The trends of business and industry would be the growth and expansion of corporations beyond individual country boundaries, demands for design cycle time reduction, and increased effectiveness and efficiency of training.

   Whereas the issues that ID’s must address are how to work cross-culturally, completing training design and development quicker, ensuring that successful training is delivered in a prompt fashion, and positively affecting the profit margin of the company.

Health-Care Education

   The medical field has been the leader in developing performance and instruction methods (p.203). The medical field is moving from a traditional training method to problem-based curricula where training is in the context of clinical cases. The more recent movement for evidence based medicine (EBM) is taken from

 problem-based learning. It involves formulating clinical questions, finding the answers as evidence from the literature that is related to the questions, assess the evidence, and then apply the solutions to the patient.  Finally, another dimension of helping or care giving is some medical schools hire actors to portray or mimic varied diseases and the medical students have to interview and examine these actors to try and discover the illness being portrayed.

   To sum up, the trends for health care are clinical reasoning, problem-based learning, and evidence-based medicine. That takes us to the issues being knowledge and research, costs and managed care, regulations and standards, and convergence.

P-12 Education

    Since the beginning of the computer age, instructional designers have directed their efforts to helping teachers integrate technology into the classroom with the main focus of improving student education and learning. Technology is now incorporated into every aspect of instructional delivery and many school

operations. Instruction technology covers everything from reporting of student progress, student assessments, grading, to individualized instruction on an ongoing basis. Larger amounts of time are given to core classes and their instruction. Schools are going greener and greener. Our schools want to protect our environment and teach our kids how to do this. With all these trends some might want to turn tail and run. But the best thing we can do is use these trends as a starting point to where educators can “think outside the box,” to ask “what if’, and to “consider the unconsidered”.

   The trends with P-12 education are instruction design technology, which is to achieve learning and performance outcomes through the use of such models as ADDIE. Classroom level technology integration models with the likes of ASSURE model, dynamic

 instruction design (DID), the iNtegrating technology for inquiry (NTeQ) model, and technology integration planning (TIP) model.

   The issues cover but are not limited to NCLB Act of 2001 taking a closer look at student achievement and teacher performance via technology integration. Technology integration is closing the gap by meeting the technology requirements to prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s careers, and lastly learning and thinking skills are improving.

In Conclusion

   In each of these fields it is easy to compare and contrast trends and issues. The professional instructional designer must be able to think on their feet. Be able to problem-solve, communicate, come up with creative ideas when constraints are placed before him/her. When the rubber meets the road the ID must be able to transfer learning efficiently and effectively all the while training others to be able to carry out their plan of action. Since I am not officially working, my dream job would be that of a director of technology for a school district. I would be the one that made sure every teacher or administrator alike was integrating technology as efficiently as possible so the maximum improvement on human performance was being achieved. Let’s don’t use technology just for the sake of using it, let’s make sure our students are learning at top notch.   

   All 3 of these fields are similar to the field I want to work in. Desiring to be a designer of instruction the trends and issues that these fields face will be quite similar to my work environment. Every boss wants more bang for his/her buck. When a project is proposed and agreed upon, as an ID time is of the utmost importance. Problem-solving, training, ethical practices, and most importantly improving human performance in a most tangible way!