The three contexts that we have read about in the last few weeks are Industrial Design in Business and Industry described in Chapter 18, Trends and Issues in P-12 in Chapter 21 and What do Instructional Designer do in Higher Education in Chapter 22.
The first and most significant theme that I noticed among all three of the contexts is that they all have an application for Instructional Design and Technology. It is definitely entrenched as a vital part of all three contexts. All three of them make use of organizational procedures to increase the efficiencies of it's work force. It doesn't matter whether that work force is in a manufacturing environment with workers and engineers or an academic environment with teachers and administrators at a P-12 or higher education with professors and assistant professors.
Instructional Design techniques seem to be almost interchangeable in the Industrial business and P-12 with the one difference in that P-12 does not have to identify the client. Although I guess even that could be the a needed step in P-12 to identify if the client were students, teachers or administrators. The higher education context seemed to be less structured than the other two contexts. While there is a structure in place it did not seem to be as rigid across the board as either the business or P-12 contexts. All three the same frame work of matter experts ,evaluators and other team members with the flowcharts looking very similar (pg 176 and 226).
A second theme throughout all three contexts is the use technology for a wide range of task from interdepartmental and international communication among employees and clients, to online training and software to enhance job efficiencies.
A scaled down version of either the environmental systemic approach in chapter or the Unit Team Approach in chapter 22 could help to bring more organization to at least one of the business projects that I am currently working on . The business side could be best served by incorporating the talents of the academic side for the good of the whole environment. Our instructors are not aware of the revenue that is required to make the company a success. One example is recently we have booked birthday parties and the parents have wanted to add an extra half hour to the birthday party. There is an extra charge for that and the parents were willing to pay the extra. Two of our younger employees were in charge of one of those birthday and ran our standard schedule for the party and then told the client "well that is all we have. You really don't need the extra half hour because we can fit it all into the normal time frame. They did not think that the extra half hour could have been extra revenue for the company. A organized instructional design process put in place would include a plan for training from the top down. Something may seem basic to one person but it is not to another.
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We all have the same amount of hours in a day. It's what we do with them that sets us apart.
5 comments:
After reading the Business & Industry chapter, I've been wondering how many businesses actually use & stick to a clear model. The only business I've ever worked at was a daycare during my early childhood internship. The only thing I ever heard about were policies (how much bleach in bleach water, food allergies...) never anything about models or teams. I suppose it's because I was just an intern. I hope that your company does invest time into a model, it sounds like that employee missed out on a chance for more money for your business.
I would be very hard to bring everyone involved in the ID process without technology. I think it makes the ID process faster.
I also interpreted job growth with Higher Education providing the most growth. In business it seems like you are an ID and that where you will be.
I think it's interesting that you found the higher education context to be less structured. For me, I thought that the issue wasn't that they were lacking structure, but that they simply had too much on their plates, so prioritizing was an issue.
I was impressed that I missed the obvious--instructional design as the joining key. I spent my time evaluating how each used it--not that they all used it. I'm always told I can't see the big picture--I can see that they are right--I totally missed this.
Margie
I was a little surprised to see in your post that you thought the instructional design techniques in business and P-12 education were better related than higher education and P-12 education. However, your rationale does make sense. I think that the perception of a lesser amount of structure in higher ed can be attributed to the fact that you clearly see examples of all three roles from chapter 27 (instructional designer, training manager, and instructor) in higher education. In P-12 education, however, you do not see as much of the training manager role, which makes that area seem more concentrated.
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