Good point M-H! I did years of instructional television and always found it more challenging and fun than spin pieces, documentaries and pure entertainment because of the collaborative aspect with academic professionals. I knew that I had to have my research current and I had to be thinking at all times because the academic folks bring brain power that always made my creativity expand by quantum leaps. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mary-Helen Ward Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 5:07 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Technology Transforming Education I work as an educational designer and I'd like to point out that educational designers don't *create* content. We take content created by academics and make suggestions about its presentation (online, in my case). In the past year I've worked on automated assessment with feedback in undergraduate engineering, structuring of graduate bioethics and a strategic project in graduate medicine. I'd have to have a fairly big brain if I could create content for all these disciplines! Our job is to support faculty in their teaching practices. For our unit this might mean helping people think their way through taking parts of their teaching online, creating specialised online summative assessments, creating tools for formative assessment, presenting support material such as 'remedial' learning support online, or maybe researching and writing a report for an upcoming strategic faculty decision. I understand that there is anxiety among academic staff that they are being 'phased out' of teaching, but in truth their minds, their insights an their presences, whether it is in person or online, are still crucial to the learning experience of students. Most of us in educational design also spent/are spending years getting our degrees - we have two PhDs in our unit, two PhD candidates (including myself) and everyone else has at least one Masters. We have the highest respect for our teaching colleagues, M-H On 23/05/2007, at 5:27 AM, Charles Balch Ph.D. wrote:
Oddly enough, from an altruistic point of view, I like the idea of inexpensive mass produced education for the masses. I particularly like the idea of getting the basics covered mechanically if I might be
able to move into more of a role of moderator or facilitator for higher level courses.
From a not so altruistic point of view, I spent many years getting my
various degrees and would hate to become obsolete. How many rocks stars does education need?
I think we are getting very close to instructional design that removes
the need for faculty. For many learners and some content, good instructional designers are already creating content that outweighs the value added of the instructor. Yes, such content costs a lot more than each delivery of "chalk and talk" but, once created, the physical
cost of delivery is marginal. Such marginal cost would be an administrators dream unless they thought things all the way through.
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