A little history on Instructional Design

I had the opportunity to read a good article on the history of Instructional Design. The article is entitled, A brief history of instructional development, by Sharon Shrock (1995). I will list the reference at the end of my writing. So here is a little summary of some of the ideas I got from her article.

Shrock spans the history of instructional design from the 1920's to the 1980's.

According to Shrock, before the 1920's, the prevalent idea was that people could improve their mental performance by simply studying certain disciplines, "in the way that calisthenics improve muscle functioniong" (Shrock, 1995, p. 12). The work of a researcher named Thorndlike, from Columbia University, started giving birth to the idea that instruction should be based on prespecified, socially useful goals. Thorndlike was also a strong advocate of educational measurement (cited in Snelbecker, 1974).

In the 1920's the idea of the mind as a muscle started giving way to other thoughts. Here is where we see the roots of job and task analysis, and researchers, such as Franklin Bobbitt (1918) advocating that "the goals for schooling could be derived from an objective analysis of those skills necessary for successful living" (Shrock, 1995, p. 13). Here we start seeing a connection between outcomes and instruction. Several other researchers at the time contributed with their ideas. Mary Ward and Frederick Burk advocated that learners should be able to progress at their own pace with little direction from their teachers. Washburne created a plan for public schools making use of self-paced, self-instructional material that allowed students to take a self-administered test to see if they were ready for testing by the teacher. Another plan was developed by Dalton, introducing the idea of contracts, where students would agree to learn something at their own pace, and only after they learned what they had agreed on, were they able to move on to a more advanced lesson. All these plans of the 1920's emphasize individualized instruction and mastery learning (Shrock, 1995, p. 13).

The Great Depression saw a slowing down of the devopment of instructional design in the 1930's. However, it is here that we see the birth of what we would call today formative evaluation. Ralph Tyler did a study to see if students completing an alternative high school curricula could have more success in college. The study showed that objectives could be clarified in terms of expected student behaviors. The term formative evaluation comes from the introduction of these objectives and their assessment, which were used to revise and refine the new curricula for the students (Shrock, 1995, p. 14).

With the advent of World War II in the 1940's, we see a rapid development of mediated instruction. The military became a good example of what education could accomplish with well-funded research and development effort. Here we see the creation of military training films, and a new role of the technical expert and the producer emerged as distinct from that of the subject matter expert (Shrock, 1995, p. 15).

The 1950's see the influence of Skinner's research into operant conditioning and animal learning, leading him to suggest the use of controlled reinforcement for desired behaviors. Here is where we see the emergence of programed instruction that consisted of "clearly stated objectives, small frames of instruction, self-facing and immediate feedback regarding the correctness of the response" (Shrock, 1995, p.15). The term task analysis is also first used by the Airforce personnel.

By the 1960's, the essence of what we know as instructional design today was already present, mostly because of the support the federal government gave to the this field. It was during this time that the field of audiovisual instruction gained its momentum.

The 1970's is viewed as a time where we see the proliferation of numerous ID models. One important addition to the process of instructional design that took place at this time was the addition of needs assessment (Shrock, 1995, p.17).

In the 1980's we see the advent of microcomputers and the proliferation of instructional design in businesses and other non-school agencies. The use of microcomputers facilitated the use of cognitive psychology and knowledge engineering strategies, broadening its theoretical and analytical bases (Shrock, 1995, p. 18).

The 1990's to our present day will find the same themes here presented, but in much more complex and sophisticated forms (Shrock, 1995, p. 18).

So here was a short summary of the history. Feel free to make any comments...

Reference

Shrock, S. (1995). A brief history of instructional development. Instructional technology: Past, present and future (2nd ed.), pp. 11-18, Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.