Trends and Issues in Various Fields
Trends and issues in IDT in various contexts: business & industry; military; health care education; P-12 education; and post-secondary education. Select at least 3 of these 5 contexts and compare/contrast the IDT trends and issues. Then explain how they are similar or different from the IDT trends and issues in the context in which you work.
There are multiple trends and issues in IDT among various settings such as business and industry, military, health care education, P-12 education and post-secondary education. When viewing and looking at the particular settings one cannot help but find similarities and differences among them. Three in particular that I wish to discuss are health care education, P-12 education, and military education.
Health care education encompasses issues in knowledge and research,costs & managed care, regulations, standards, and licensure as well as converging technologies. Trends in healthcare education consist of problem based learning as well as evidence-based medicine and include roles of risk,sensory perception, science and innovation. Instructional design plays a huge role in P-12 education through technology integration. ID development centers on systems, product, and classroom. From there various integration models have been developed and therefore giving opportunities for educators to grow and develop. Issues in P-12 education often stem from technological support, teacher content & technological knowledge, availability and access to computers or resources and ultimately teacher beliefs and attitudes. Issues in military education consist of funding, technological range and design limitations. As the military evolves future the role of ID is evolving to trends such as new technologies and international responsibilities of national or multinational forces.
Among these three settings some commonalities that they shared were needing constant evolution due to constant changes in the field. Healthcare and P-12 are similar in that problem based learning is hot trend and driving force in developing critical, problem solving thinkers. One commonality that springs to mind is funding and its effect on ID development and implementation. Overall I feel that no matter what the setting or field instructional design plays and key role and therefore they all have different yet similar trends and issues.
Global Trends and Issues
As the world’s population grows exponentially, we face unprecedented challenges that have implications for learning. How and can we prepare our youth to address the problems of living in a world with 9 billion people when the earth’s resources cannot sustain that many? Does our current education system, curriculum, and instructional practices help learners foster the complex problem-solving skills necessary to tackle these issues? Are there methods and practices used in European and Asian countries that we should use here in the US? Why or why not?
My post did not include Health Science or military, but I can see how they are definitely similar to P-12 education. All of the types of instructional design are limited by funding and must constantly evolve to stay current (mostly because technology is growing and changing so quickly). Funding sources may vary (government, tax payers, research grants), but the need for instructional design must facilitate the expense. I think in Health Science it is especially tricky to keep current on instructional design because research is constantly increasing techniques and equipment used to diagnose and treat illnesses.
ReplyDeleteI also agree we need to move away from teaching to a test and begin teaching children to become problem solvers and critical thinkers. Its an easy statement to make, but harder to quantify. The reason for testing is obvious - there are basic skills all schools should be responsible for imparting to students and critical thinking and problem solving is not easily tested or evaluated, at least not with a multiple choice test. As a CTE teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to supplement a student's education with real world skills and problem solving tools. It takes more than one subject and more than one teacher to create a well-balanced, well-prepared student ready to face the challenges of the future. We can not discount the way other regions are educating students, but we must meet the needs of our students here first since no one knows them like we do and our culture and priorities are not exactly the same as other parts of the world.
It is important to realize the need for up to date training and teaching and realize the tool that technology can be in these settings. You did a great job highlighting the trends and issues in health care education, p-12 education and military training. I believe that funding will be an issue that we will address for the rest of our lives, so I think it is valuable to examine the ways that IDT can actually help save money for our businesses and places of education. Did you look at how technology makes a difference in education globally? One thing that I noticed from personal experience is that class sizes in Europe and Asia look very different than they do in the US. I wonder how IDT plays a role in that?
ReplyDeleteHi Taylor,
ReplyDeleteSo for the late post. I really enjoyed your post. I totally agree with your comparison of the similarities and differences in your three choices. Having a military career background and having worked in a health care related field doing my military career, I know that there is a lot of problem-based training. For example, flight simulation training has many problem-based scenarios such as, what to do during an in-flight emergency. How to react if you have an engine failure. Similarly, the health care profession has problem-based training on how to triage patients during a disaster situation or what to do doing a heart attack. These two professions also share the need to follow strict guidelines on to function on a daily basis because lives depend on how these professionals react to any given situation. Distinctively though, business and industry are not mandated to follow a strict course of action to varying scenarios. Consequently, training in the business and industry sector would not as problem-based. So yes I totally agree with your analysis.
Thanks,
David