D/B10

After reading the three chapters and the varying roles of instructional design in different environments, I think I can synthesize what I think the differences are. Obviously, all three fields (business, P-12 education, and higher education) utilize the instructional design ideas and procedures, but they do it in very different ways. In every new situation there will be new information to learn and process and instructional designers aim to make this knowledge acquisition as smooth and concise as possible.

In a business, this new knowledge could take the form of employee orientation or training or even re-training. In P-12 education this knowledge is the required content set by the state that the students must learn. In higher education this knowledge is the information presented to the students that committees have deemed important to include in the class.

However, in each situation, the way instructional designers are utilized is very different. In the business world, the instructional designer(s) may be hired by the business to come up with an instructional design plan that streamlines the hiring or training process. In this case there is a person whose sole job is to design the instruction and information in a clear and interesting way.

In P-12 schools, instructional designing is part of the job description of the teacher. While teachers receive support in planning their lessons or managing their classes, ultimately it is up to them to deliver the instruction. It is part of the training of teachers (in college) to teach them how to design innovative and effective lessons.

In higher education, though professors (associates, assistants, etc.) do teach the information, they may or may not have undergone training in how to teach. They may be experts in their field, but they need training in designing their instruction. In higher education, it is my understanding that the role of instructional designers is to collaborate within the college or department in designing the syllabus and the way the content will be presented. From what I gleaned from the book, the instructional designer could be part of the college faculty and could help different departments plan their curriculum or the instructional designer might also be an expert in that particular field and only work with other faculty in that field in designing their lessons.

I think P-12 education (my particular field) could learn a lot from the way that higher education utilizes instructional designers. While doing my undergraduate classes in preparation for teaching, we were critiqued on our lesson plans. classroom management, etc. We don't really have that once we are actually teaching. Sure, probationary teachers have mentors and get observed, but not often enough. In my undergrad classes we were critiqued on every lesson. Granted, they were not the best critiques since they were not in authentic situations, but they were valuable either way. It would be great if, like higher education, we had expert teachers help design our lessons, observed our teaching often and gave us basic advice, I think we would be better teachers. However, I think these expert teachers/instructional designers' sole responsibility should be to guide current teachers instead of while they were also teaching themselves, simply because its hard to invest that much time when you are teaching. I don't think the business model of hiring in an instructional designer would be ideal. If someone came into my classroom and wanted to design my lessons without having teaching experience, I don't think they would be very helpful. I've found that people that aren't teachers sometimes forget that kids aren't very rational and still act like kids. We, as teachers, recognize this and use this energy and evidence in planning our lessons.