[Air-l] Technology Transforming Education

[Mary-Helen Ward]

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.