In this session participants will:

* Receive an overview of TPCK/TPACK
* Receive an overview of TPC 3D
* Explore a set of Instructional Design tools that utilize TPC 3D
* Observe how SME/F data informs Instructional Design decisions

Abstract

Title: Resisting Technological Gravity

Purpose of Session and Theoretical Base:
The 21st century promises instructional designers great opportunities, especially with the increased connections and interactions made possible by new applications of technology. Yet accompanying these opportunities will be a corresponding challenge – the pressure to abandon essential characteristics of new educational approaches, and settle instead for routine practices that do not preserve the level of quality those approaches originally expressed. This pressure could come from many sources – the never-ending quest to cut costs; the stress of working on too many projects at once; or the insistence of team members that the common formulas are “just the way we do things here.”

Because of its seeming ubiquity as well as its strength, McDonald and Gibbons (2009) recently labeled these pressures as “technological gravity.” By this they meant not just the potential effects that electronic devices may have on designers, but also the effects of any tool, process, or belief that create “invisible and perhaps near-irresistible forces [that] act on instructional [designers] to pull them towards a common point” (pp. 383-384). Their metaphor expresses the essence of the problem earlier described. Just like an object thrown into the air returns to the earth, instructional designers sometimes fall into the rote use of formulaic practices, which do not help them achieve the high levels of instructional quality they originally set out to achieve.

Is it possible for instructional designers to resist the influences that lead to this technological gravity? How can instructional designers avoid technological gravity, and so better create instruction that is meaningful, inspirational, effective, and valuable? One way of resisting technological gravity could be for designers to develop guiding principles about their work, or individual sets of “beliefs, concepts, and attitudes. . . . from which personal purpose and direction [can be] derived” (Ely, 1970, p. 81). Under the influence of technological gravity, designers may begin to feel it is acceptable, logical, or even beneficial to compromise their original ideals. If this happens, having strong guiding principles to help them “make decisions, view constraints in creative ways, and solve problems without abandoning [the] important goals they are trying to achieve,” can pull them back to the center of practice they actually want to exemplify (McDonald & Gibbons, 2009, p. 387). Reliance on guiding principles does not imply that designers should ignore analysis or evaluation in favor of uninformed biases. Blindly adhering to beliefs regardless of evidence or even common sense can lead to unhealthy dogma. But the other extreme – not considering one’s fundamental values – can lead designers to adopt the formulaic techniques characterized by technological gravity. While one’s guiding principles should be informed by data, they should also be statements of a new world one is willing to work to create. If one were climbing a mountain, one’s guiding principles are what keep focus on the summit (as opposed to stopping at a convenient way station, or abandoning the adventure altogether), while analysis and evaluation are what helps address challenges encountered along the way.

Objectives:
In this presentation I consider three areas in which instructional designers can develop guiding principles, to help them avoid technological gravity and better adhere to the levels of quality expressed in the design approaches they adopt. These areas are principles about what instruction is, how instruction is made, and what instruction is for.

Practical Applications:
Guiding principles about what instruction is help designers determine their personal metaphors about the nature of instruction and learning, identify system characteristics on which they should focus their design attention, and judge the output of their work. Principles about how instruction is made affect designers’ choices of what design processes they will follow, how they define a complete design, and where they turn for help when they encounter difficulties. Principles about what instruction is for help designers better define the problems they are attempting to solve, the goals they believe are legitimate to pursue, and the evaluative criteria that should judge an instructional experience.

By developing guiding principles in these three areas, instructional designers can better resist technological gravity, or the tendency to be pulled away from the high levels of instructional quality they intend to achieve. As they so resist, they will also be better able to use all available instructional approaches, processes, techniques, and technologies in a manner consistent with the ideals they aim to accomplish. Especially given the challenges of developing instructional technology in the 21st century, aggressively resisting technological gravity could become one of the most important skills for an instructional designer to cultivate. The conclusion of this presentation, then, is to encourage instructional designers, both individually and as a profession, to resist technological gravity in the pursuit of the highest levels of instructional design quality of which they can imagine.

All instructional designers and other interested parties are invited to attend this presentation. No special background is required, nor will participants need to bring anything special to the session.

References:
Ely, D. P. (1970). Toward a philosophy of instructional technology. Journal of Educational Technology, 1, 81-94.

McDonald, J. K., & Gibbons, A. S. (2009). Technology I, II, and III: Criteria for understanding and improving the practice of instructional technology. Educational Technology Research and Development, 57(3), 377-392.

Presenter

Jason McDonald
Executive Producer
LDS Motion Picture Studio

http://jkmcdonald.com

• Purpose of presentation (why is this important and who is the target audience)
Many TTIX attendees are involved in some aspect of instructional design. The literature about instructional design fails to mention some key ideas that lie at the heart of design activity. Operational principle is one of these ideas. The purpose of this presentation is to dramatize the concept of the operational principle by highlighting it in other design fields and then demonstrate how it applies as well to the creation of instructional designs.

• Objectives of the presentation (what are you planning to do)
Objective 1: To define the concept of “operational principle”.
Objective 2: To demonstrate the usefulness of this concept in the progress of other design fields.
Objective 3: To show that operational principles exist in instructional designs by demonstrating the abstraction of the “model-centered instruction” principle from numerous existing research designs.
Objective 4: To show the applicability of operational principles in the creation of instructional designs.

• Practical applications (how can your results/strategies be used by others)
One interesting aspect of operational principles is that they are employed in making designs whether designers are aware of it or not. Artifacts designed by humans all involve operational principles. If the designer is unaware of the use of operational principles, then imitation becomes the major technique of designing. But imitation of other designs and modifications made in the process often destroy the effective principle of the original in the copy, and the designer can find that something that seems just like the original model does not work as expected. Awareness of the role of operational principles underlying designs helps designers abstract ideas from other designs without losing their essential qualities. Moreover, a designer who understands an operational principle can use it as a generative engine for multiple designs–ones that need not look similar on the surface but which share a common underlying architecture.

• Information (data or theoretical base) to support what is advocated.
The literature describing the operational principle exists outside of instructional design, in other design-related fields. Polanyi, a philosopher of technology introduced the idea in the 1930’s while writing about the distinction between science and technology. In order to describe technology as a knowledge-producing endeavor and to justify it as a pursuit with equal footing with science, he had to describe the theoretical constructs of the technological realm. Operational principle was one of the key ideas he used in his argument. The concept–and Polanyi’s dream of establishing technology in its own right–passed on to Herbert Simon, who in his Sciences of the Artificial talked about operational principles obliquely in terms of means-end analysis. Vincenti, in What Engineers Know and How They Know It, described the operational principle as one of the key theoretical constructs of technological research. The explosion of science and the diversion of funding through scientific research channels, as well as the university’s desire for scientific respectability described by Simon, has pushed the discussion of technology as a knowledge-creation field and with it the notion of the operational principle out of the spotlight. This presentation will introduce the useful concept to an audience of instructional designers.

2nd-Day Hands On: Applying Operation Principles in Instructional Design
We will use the “model-centered instruction” operational principle introduced the first day to generate a variety of designs, all sharing the same underlying architecture, but dissimilar on the surface. Through this, the attendees will obtain a better idea of how architecture, not surface resemblance, determines the effectiveness of designs.

Biography
Andrew S. Gibbons (Ph.D., Instructional Psychology , BYU) worked for Courseware, Incorporated, an instructional design firm for five years, heading up projects to design training for military planners and helicopter and fighter pilots. In 1979 he was employed by Wicat Systems, Inc. (Orem, Utah) as a project director to work with military and industry, designing innovative training solutions. In 1993, Dr. Gibbons accepted a position with Utah State University, where he taught and conducted research for ten years. His work has centered on the architectural aspects of instructional designs and the abstractions designers use as they design. In 2003, Dr. Gibbons accepted a position at Brigham Young University as Chair of the Instructional Psychology and Technology department. His research and teaching continued and has produced a theory of design architecture involving design layers and design languages.