Instructional designers are increasingly looking beyond the field's mainstream approaches to achieve desired outcomes. They seek more creative forms of design to help them invent more imaginative experiences that better reflect their vision and ideals. This essay is addressed to designers who are attracted to these expanded visions of their…

Critical discussions within the field of instructional design have addressed the roles and competencies of designers, as well as the nature of design work per se. This article presents an overarching metaphor--namely, instructional design as a journey into the unfamiliar--that views design as a two-fold learning enterprise (i.e., innovative and…

This design case (Boling, 2010) includes the challenges, considerations, and decisions associated with the design and development of a learning space/place (Dourish, 2006; Harrison & Dourish, 1996) focused on innovative, creative, and imaginative ways to transform teaching and learning with technology. The T.E.C.H. Playground in the College of…

Technology, thought of as the ensemble of utilities and devices and of their impact on our lives, proceeds in steps, each of which seems plausible. This kind of development also encourages the view that technology is value-neutral. It always can be used both for good and ill, and we decide how to use it. The production of food and the development…

Most current debate on instructional technology is characterized either by grandiose speculation on the salvation of education through automation (without specification of "what" and "how" technological innovations will actually be introduced in specific classroom situations, and how the changes will be financed), or by jargon-filled hairsplitting…

This article describes initial success in developing an interdisciplinary studio for teaching collaborative creativity and design, with faculty from multiple departments co-teaching and co-mentoring interdisciplinary student groups engaged in social innovation. The rationale for developing this studio has been to prepare students for the kind of…

While successful instructional innovation is the result of efforts of individual faculty and instructional support staff, it is also influenced by institutional and contextual factors that include personal characteristics, pedagogies, curricula, and other tangible and intangible dynamics. These same forces can also work in concert to assure…

Learning technologies are now commonplace in education, and generate large volumes of educational data. Scholars have argued that analytics can and should be employed to optimize learning and learning environments. This article explores what is really meant by "analytics", describes the current best-known examples of institutional…

In this article, the authors start with a description of the learner-centered paradigm of education. The key tenets of the paradigm are outlined as: Competency-based student progress, competency-based student assessment and records, personal learning plans, project-based learning, just-in-time instructional support, student as self-directed…

The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of a Learning-by-Doing Instructional model to create an innovative language course. The authors describe the structure of the course, the instructional strategies implemented, and the Learning Management System tools used to create an engaging learning experience.

Scholars representing the field of communications were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Jeremy Bailenson, Patrice Buzzanell, Stanley Deetz, David Tewksbury, Robert J. Thompson, and…

Scholars representing the field of design were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Richard Buchanan, Nigel Cross, David Durling, Harold Nelson, Charles Owen, and Anna Valtonen. Scholars…

Taking a media ecology perspective, this article argues that technology cannot be neutral, because it is a form of change, and it has an inherent bias based on the properties of its materials and methods. Additionally, the application of a technology is an intrinsic part of the technology itself, as is technique, instructions, software, or…

Scholars representing the field of systems science were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Alexander Christakis, Debora Hammond, Michael Jackson, Alexander Laszlo, Ian Mitroff, Dave…

The digital revolution is transforming the ways in which knowledge and culture are produced, accessed, and, most of all, created and re-created. And as the Internet is nowadays generally acknowledged to be a public or a common good, this leads us to re-think the laws written for the 20th century technology, economy, and culture. Moreover, the…