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Book Review:
Trends and Issues in Instructional Design
and Technology
Reiser and Dempsey's book, Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, is reviewed and deemed as an excellent text in the field of instructional technology. It provides those who plan to enter the field with an overview of the profession and helps those already in the field to keep up with the latest trends. The book covers a comprehensive range of topics: from the fundamentals to the trends and issues and from theories to practices. It captures the recent interests in the field and helps readers construct a vision for the future. This book is succinct and easy to read. Its pedagogical features, such as reflection and application questions, promote both instructivist and constructivist learning.
Many graduate programs in the field of Instructional Technology offer a "foundation" or "trends and issues" class to provide students with an overview of the field. These classes aim to help students understand what our profession is, where we were from, where we are now, and what the current issues and trends are. Anglin's book, Instructional technology: Past, present, and future (1995), has been an excellent text used for such classes in many programs. However, it has been almost seven years since the 2nd edition of Anglin's book was published. During the last seven years, exponential growth in technology has had great impact on society as a whole and on our field, in particular. Our profession has grown and evolved. New knowledge has been developed and new directions found. We, as a field, have been in a constant process of redefining our profession. Reiser and Dempsey's book, Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (2002), captures many of the new ideas and directions in the field and can be ranked with Anglin's book as another excellent text. It provides those who plan to enter the field with an overview of the profession and helps those already in the field keep up with the latest developments.
Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology consists of 29 chapters contributed by many leading figures in the field. These chapters are organized into six sections, ranging from the fundamentals to the trends and issues and from theories to practices.
The first section, titled Defining the Field, discusses the different labels and definitions for the profession, sketches the historical evolution of the field and highlights the foundational issue of instructional design process. The second section, Learning: Foundations and Trends, examines the theoretical foundations and trends related to learning and instruction, including topics such as psychological theories, epistemological perspectives, motivation, instructional strategies, learning styles, and the role problem solving plays in instructional design. The third section, Performance Technology, focuses on the performance technology movement and its related issues, such as the shift from training to performance, electronic performance support systems, knowledge management systems, return on investment, project management, and diffusion and innovation. The fourth section, Trends and Issues in Various Settings, presents the diverse practices that professionals in our field are engaged in under various work environments, including business and industry, the military, health care, public schools, higher education, and the international settings. The fifth section, titled New Directions in Instructional Design and Technology, discusses the recent interests in the field, including online learning, object-oriented distributed learning environment, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as the future of instructional design as predicted from political, economic, social, and technological trends. The last section, Getting an IDT Position and Succeeding at IT, is the most practical part of the whole book. It provides lessons and guidelines on how to secure a position in the field, lists the competencies required of our professions, and describes the professional organizations and publications that help keep us abreast with the development in the field.
Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology is an informative and well-written book. It is comprehensive, but succinct and easy-to-read. Its nice pedagogical features render it particularly suitable as a textbook.
The book has extensive coverage when it addresses issues and trends in different settings. I used to dichotomize the practice of Instructional Technology as either in education or business and industry. The book provides a more complete view in this regard. For the first time, I realized instructional design and development has a role in health care in addition to other areas. A whole section of the book is devoted to the practices of the field in multiple settings. It helps the reader understand the professional identity of the field and all the possible career paths for us.
As mentioned at the beginning of the review, this book captures some of the most significant new directions in the field. Technological developments in artificial intelligence, information technology and neuroscience-as well as their possible impact on the field-are described. These perspectives help readers build a vision for the future of the field.
Practical issues in the field are usually not addressed in textbooks. This book, however, has a whole section dealing with the practical issues of getting a job in the field, the skills and competencies required, and the professional organizations and publications. As a graduate student in the field, I found this section especially helpful.
This is a comprehensive book. It is a challenge to cover all the major trends and issues of the field in 400 pages. Many chapters did a good job presenting the content in a concise and easy-to-read manner. For example, Gustafson and Branch's chapter on What is Instructional Design explains the topic by focusing on the systematic instructional design process as represented by the ADDIE model. Other ID models-such as the Dick & Carey model-are briefly discussed as elaboration and variation of the ADDIE model. Six characteristics of instructional design are presented. This chapter is less than 10 pages, but it provides readers with all the fundamentals of instructional design.
The editors claimed that the book has some pedagogical features, including book introduction, epilogue, section overview, chapter introduction, knowledge and comprehension questions, and application questions. The first several features are common in books, but the reflection and application questions are not found very often in most of the books in our field. These questions are very useful in helping me understand the topic and digest the content. The questions promote both instructivist and constructivist learning on the part of the reader. Some of the questions simply draw the reader's attention to facts, such as "listing the definition of the field at different time in history." Some other questions, on the other hand, encourage the reader to explore and construct his/her own learning. For example, some questions ask the reader to compare and contrast competitive theories, and some other questions ask them to explore and research on the topics mentioned but not elaborated in the chapter. With these questions, the power of the book goes beyond its content. It serves as the starting point for the reader to investigate various topics.
I would recommend this excellent book as a text or reference book for the "foundations" or "trends and issues" class in graduate programs in the field, but I would like to see the following improvements in future editions of the book:
- The chapters on project management, evaluation, and diffusion were organized into the Performance Technology section. They do not seem to fit there and it would be better if they are taken out as another section.
- It would help us to better understand what our field is, if a chapter can be devoted to explaining what our field is not and how our field is related to other fields.
References
Anglin, G. J. (1995). Instructional technology: Past, present, and future (2nd ed.). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2002). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
