Trends & Issues in IDT

IDT in the healthcare context not only involves the delivery of health services, but also biomedical research. It includes the medical profession and its varied subspecialties plus the professions of veterinary medicine, dentistry, nursing, allied health, and public health. Government health agencies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and clinics train staff internally and often provide training to others. The health science enterprise is very broad, encompassing more than hospitals, clinics, and practice of providing health care. Because of this some of the challenges that designers face are: knowledge and research, costs and managed care, regulations and standards, and convergence. I have worked both for a state government healthcare agency and a pharmaceutical company.  In both instances, it was really important to stay abreast and be up-to-date on trends and issues involving the industry. Trends and standards in medical education often spill over into other domains as a consequence. But there are additional reasons why medical education affects other health professions.

In the military, IDTi s based on an integrated, dedicated, and astute group of individuals who share camaraderie unmatched in the corporate world. Their culture is one born of the ever-present threat of war and the necessity to trust one another with their lives. Among the challenges to instructional designers working within a military environment are: recognizing that ineffective instruction can have catastrophic consequences; creating training that addresses the needs of the military while considering the interests of the individual.  Some of the issues that they face are: funding, technological range, delivery environment, design constraints, people and alternative training solutions.

Business & industry in IDT have established trends that include the growth and expansion of corporations beyond individual county boundaries; demands for design cycle time reduction; and at the same time, for increased effectiveness and efficiency of training itself. There is often a performance gap caused by constraints between actual and ideal practice in instructional design. There are three types of constraints that impact the design process: context constraints, designer-related issues, and project management versus instructional design.

Similarities

All of the contexts share a funding commonality.  Just like in any other field teachers want to compete and be up-to-date with other industries. By keeping cost in mind the designer must be able to come up with cost effectives tools and resources within the given budget parameters. I know that in any industry for which I have been employed, funding for technology has always been at he heart of whether it could be explored or not.

Differences

In the varying fields they each industry has its share of challenges and issues. In the healthcare industry, the education of health professionals is serious business, and that is one reason why clinical problem solving and medical education programs are subject to ongoing evaluation and research. The field is now associated with analyzing human performance problems, In the military field, instructional designers play a significant role in the transformation to accommodate the needs of today’s service members and move the military of today to the military of tomorrow.  . While the business & industry field Instructional design today encompasses much more than simply producing instruction. There are both differences and similarities in the various contexts to that to which I work in.  Budgets are always a factor but the environment and clientele is educating students for the future so they are equipped with the skills necessary to be competitive and successful.

Our current education system in how curriculum and instructional approaches are laid out is helping learners with problem-solving abilities. The impact that technology has had on today’s schools has been quite significant. This widespread adoption of technology has completely changed how teachers teach and students learn. Teachers are learning how to teach with emerging technologies (tablets, iPads, Smart Boards, digital cameras, computers), while students are using advanced technology to shape how they learn. By embracing and integrating technology in the classroom, we are setting our students up for a successful life outside of school. Technology changes by the minute, and as educators we need to keep up with the times in order to best prepare our students for this ever-changing world that we live in. The European and Asian countries have highly sophisticated high-tech industries and highly developed digital infrastructures. Both highly value education and teachers, human contact, and both have attempted to reform their education systems for the twenty-first-century world. Different cultures adapt technology at different rates, but nearly every culture eventually does. I think it would be a great idea for the US to be out front and be a leader in technology.

Rieser, R.A, Dempsey, J V.(2002).  Trends and issues in instructional design and technology.  Upper Saddler River, N.J.  Merrill Prentice Hall, c2002

Evaluating Programs and Human Performance

One model is Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method (SCM) this model is focused on finding out what about training or other organizational intervention worked. The SCM model is a 5-step process. First, you focus and plan the success case (SC) study; Identify targeted business goals and impact expectations. Second, construct a visual impact model. This includes explicating the major program goals and listing all impacts/outcomes that are hoped for or are expected to result from the program; survey a large representative sample of all participants in a program to identify high impact and low impact cases. Third, conduct a survey research study to identify the best and the worst cases; analyze the survey data to identify a group of successful participants and a group of unsuccessful participants. Fourth, schedule and conduct in-depth interviews (usually via the telephone for approximately forty-five minutes per interview) with multiple success cases to document the nature and business value of their application of learning and identify the performance factors that supported learning application and obstacles that prevented it. Fifth, write-up and communicate the evaluation findings; document, disseminate and tell the story. This approach can be used for any type of intervention designed to improve performance, including training, performance support systems, information solutions, communities of practice, improved feedback systems, informal and semi-structured learning initiatives and social learning initiatives. I would use this model to evaluate my instruction by assessing skills that will allow students to face a world that is continually changing. They must be able to think critically, to analyze, and to make inferences. I would take an active role in making decisions about the purpose of the assessment and the content that is being assessed.

Another model is Patton’s Utilization-Focused Evaluation (U-FE) the cardinal rule in U-FE is that the utility of an evaluation is to be judged by the degree to which it is used. The evaluator focuses on use from the beginning until the end of the evaluation, and during that time, he or she continually facilitates use and organizational learning or any other process that helps ensure that the evaluation results will continue to be used once the evaluator leaves the organization. U-FE follows several steps. Because U-FE is a participatory evaluation approach, the client and primary users will be actively involved in structuring, conducting, interpreting and using the evaluation and its results. Here are the major steps:

v Conduct a readiness assessment

v Identify the “primary intended users” and develop a working relationship with them

v Conduct a situational analysis

v Identify the “primary intended uses

v Focus the evaluation

v Design the evaluation

v Collect, analyze, and interpret the evaluation data use multiple methods and sources of evidence.

v Continually facilitate evaluation use.

v Conduct a metaevaluation; be accountable, learn and improve

I would use this model by considering how the evaluation might be conducted in ways that increase skills, knowledge, confidence, self-determination, and a sense of ownership among the students participating in the evaluation.

Yes, a return on investment and management of resources should also be considered in evaluations of instructional programs. This means they need to see a dollar value placed on the benefits of the training, not just that students/participants believe the training to be valuable to them or they enjoyed the training overall. They want proof that the training program benefited the organization/students in a positive manner.

Other measures to be considered are district/student satisfaction and quality, cost, time, and if the metric is appropriate and measures what it sets out to measure.

A performance problem in my area is how to organize and arrange a class of 25 – 30 students, when there is barely enough room for 25 students. One way to solve the problem in a non-instructional way is through classroom arrangement and organization to maximize the available space.  Another problem-solving strategy is when students need more space they can go to the library, outside or to a lab to do projects requiring more space. I see an informal learning environment working better to assist with solving the problem because it creates opportunities to help people/students and organizations achieve learning and performance goals. Because learning happens anywhere, any time. The learner is inspired to learn because of an immediate desire to know how to do something or understand a topic.

Rieser, R.A, Dempsey, J V.(2002).  Trends and issues in instructional design and technology.  Upper Saddler River, N.J.  Merrill Prentice Hall, c2002.