Instructional Technology

In popular usage, instructional technology refers to the use of communications media–hardware and software-to help people learn. At different times different media have been central to educators' conception of instructional technology. The term first came into widespread use in the early 1960s; James D. Finn, a professor at the University of Southern California, was probably the most vigorous proponent of the new term. At that time the focus was on audiovisual media such as radio, television, film, slides, filmstrips, and audio recordings. By the middle of the 1980s the focus had shifted dramatically to computers. Within the field of practice of instructional technology, the term from its inception connoted a process or way of thinking about instruction. The idea of technology as a process was supported by economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith, who referred to technology not as things but as " the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks " (Galbraith, 1967). This notion received influential sanction when a presidential commission issued a report in 1970 defining instructional technology as " a systematic way of designing, carrying out, and evaluating the total process of learning and teaching.... " (Commission on Instructional Technology, p. 21). This definition also highlighted the growing commitment to a systems approach to solving problems. The systems approach emerged in the 1960s as a " soft " application of the scientific procedures of systems analysis that developed around the use of computers for military operations research during World War II. This orderly, logical process gave rigor to the rather artistic approaches that previously had characterized film and television