Current Issues in IDT

Professional Ethics

One of the tenets of professional ethics involves diversity of opinion. The text states, "It is important to keep in mind that the journey to reach a learning goal may have many paths to the final destination. An example of this concept is the obligation to create a learning situation that allows for an open discussion of various ideas that may differ from those held by the instructor" (Page 343, emphasis mine). A lot of the courses I work on are from the Sociology department. These courses attract a wide variety of opinions, especially from non-sociology majors who haven't been exposed to the subject matter before. We encourage instructors to give students meaty discussion questions to spark a debate, but to stay in the background as much as possible so as not to sway students' opinions--a lot of kids will automatically assume the instructor's opinion on a subject is the "right" one. Allowing for a variety of different opinions is an important part of my job, and one I will continue to focus on going forward.

Diversity and Accessibility

My professional ethics entry touched on diversity, so I'll focus on accessibility here. Accessibility is an important thing to my team. I've heard of a couple lawsuits against universities for not making their courses accessible enough,  so it's going to be a point of emphasis for us going forward. One of the measures we're taking to help in this area is to provide closed captioning for video content. We're working with a company called 3Play, who specializes in captioning and transcriptions. Outsourcing it is fairly cost effective, and makes our content far more accessible. We're also using the WAVE toolbar in our browsers to measure how accessible each course is.

The Changing Nature of Design

The chapter talks about incorporating more art and design in the field of instructional design, as opposed to regarding it as strictly a science or process. Something we're looking at is improving the experience of learners, which the chapter also touches on (Page 361). Similar to how user-experience designers at web-development companies, we're working on ways to streamline menus and make the online course environment simpler, easier to navigate, and better looking. We're planning to experiment with WordPress, which allows us to create a much more pleasing experience than our learning management system.

Works Cited

Reiser, Robert V.; Dempsey, John V. (2011-03-14). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (3rd Edition) (Page 343). Pearson HE, Inc.. Kindle Edition.