
Brent G WilsonUniversity of Colorado | UCD
Brent G Wilson
PhD
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71
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Introduction
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August 1987 - March 2016
Publications
Publications (71)
How do people come to think of themselves as instructional designers? This is partly a matter of acquiring expertise, e.g., the knowledge and skill sets found in professional standards, e.g., those of IBSTPI or AECT. But identity also involves adoption of new professional roles and affiliation and active engagement with professional communities. ID...
In 1987, David Jonassen hired me and Scott Grabinger after arriving in Denver the year before to establish an ed-tech program. Marty Tessmer, who split time between faculty duties and ID work for the library, had already been on campus when Dave arrived. I was 6 years younger than Dave and the youngest of the group. The next 6 years the four of us...
Digital badges are often contrasted with transcripted degrees and certificates traditionally offered by universities. As micro-credentials, badges may be issued by employers and professional organizations, and accessed and used flexibly by learners. But universities themselves can also appropriate badging practices. In this chapter a university-bas...
Two instructors report our experience co-teaching an action research (AR) required as part of an e-learning master’s degree. Adopting a practice-centered stance we focus on the course activities of participants (instructors and students), with particular attention to the careful crafting of course elements with the goal of achieving an excellent le...
David H. Jonassen passed away December 2nd 2012 prior to publication of the Jonassen Festschrift. David helped shape this volume by recommending authors and contributing the final chapter. During the last two years of his life while struggling with cancer, Dave not only contributed to this volume, he was named a Fellow to the American Educational R...
E-learning specialists tend to be very pragmatic in orientation, building programs and developing courses, and curriculum in response to problems and opportunities encountered in practice. This is done out of conviction that technology can open up doors of quality and access hitherto closed. Yet e-learning programs do not have unilaterally positive...
This paper explores the meaningful, trusting relationships that can develop between instructor and students in a course – and the learning opportunities that this trusting relationship can afford. Drawing on an economic metaphor of exchange, we define pedagogical capital as the accumulated, actionable, mutual trust established between instructor an...
This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate how instructional designers use evaluation in everyday design
practice. While past research has examined how designers spend their time, how they generally make decisions, and expert-novice
differences, little attention has been paid to use of context, input, process, or product evalu...
AECT has recently (yet again!) redefined our field, reverting back to the use of the term educational technology. We believe this recent change is problematic for a number of reasons, but primarily because of the weak rationale offered for the change. This change affects how external audiences view our profession and is likely to confuse practition...
This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate instructional designers’ views and uses of conceptual tools
in design work (e.g., learning theories and design theories). While past research has examined how instructional designers
spend their time, how they generally make decisions, and expert-novice differences, little attention h...
Hypertext is a nonlinear way of presenting content consisting of nodes and links that a person can access using a variety of search and browsing strategies. In this article, we focus on the use of hypertext as an instructional tool. We compare hypertext instruction with traditional instructional formats. We offer some initial guidelines relating to...
Performance support is close to the center of a host of related fields and specialties, including human performance technology, electronic performance support systems, technical communications, and instructional design. Because of their common interest in performance support, and common external influences such as cognitive psychology and digital t...
This overview examines the challenges and opportunities afforded by games and simulations to enrich teaching and learning. It presents the preliminary findings from a classroom study that used the promising educational games and simulations developed by the Nobel Foundation. Middle school students from all groups, disaggregated by gender and ethnic...
This chapter addresses several concerns of teacher-practitioners as schools strive towards increasing student achievement. It shows how one classroom teacher analyzed students' academic performance, as measured through pre-and post-test scores, online think-writes, product designs, explanations and reflections in a guided-inquiry module, to find th...
This article describes the design of an interactive learning environment to increase student achievement in secondary schools by addressing students' preconceptions, and promoting purposeful social collaboration, distributed cognition, and contextual learning. The paper presents the framework that guided our design efforts to immerse all students i...
The present set of papers is reviewed in light of their commonalities and their relative homogeneity. Design forms of research are contrasted with traditional variable-based or theory-based inquiry. The disruptive role of research on ICT in education is considered, in contrast to its role in incrementally contributing to a knowledge base. Researche...
This paper describes design of an interactive learning environment to increase student achievement in middle schools by addressing students' preconceptions, and promoting purposeful social collaboration, distributed cognition, and contextual learning. The paper presents a framework that guided our design efforts to immerse all students in a progres...
The contributions to this issue share a focus on design of e-learning environments. Instructional designers stand at very
early stages of knowledge in this area, but with great potential for growth and progress. This commentary offers an activity-based
perspective on e-learning environments, resulting in a flexible stance toward instructional strat...
P>Learning communities can emerge spontaneously when people find common learning goals and pursue projects and tasks together in pursuit of those goals. Bounded learning communities (BLCs) are groups that form within a structured teaching or training setting, typically a course. Unlike spontaneous communities, BLCs develop in direct response to gui...
Learning Sciences and Instructional Design share many common interests, though few common histories or practitioners. This panel session allows for open exchange regarding these issues, the traditions, foundations, theoretical and philosophical lenses utilized, practices and research. The participants span from traditional IS researchers to traditi...
Describes experiences as judges at the University of Minnesota Learning Software Design Competition. Highlights include criteria for judging; an overview of some of the software programs; and the future of learning software, including Internet delivery, emphasis on visual and three-dimensional problem-solving environments, rich learning environment...
WebQuests have become a popular form of guided inquiry using Web resources. The goal of WebQuests is to help students think and reason at higher levels, and use information to solve problems. In this paper we present modifications to the WebQuest model drawing on primarily on schema theory. We believe these changes will further enhance student refl...
As individuals and organizations complete the process of adopting new technologies to support learning, a number of factors come into play — including the technology’s design and usability; the fit with local culture and practices; the associated costs; and the expected benefits of adoption. Some factors are about the technology, others about the p...
The underlying principles of learning and cognition are the same for all media and learning environments, including the Web. Effective learning can happen on the Web if a few key principles of information design and learner guidance are applied.
Discussion of the adoption of new learning technologies focuses on the need for new frameworks to understand instructional design and use. Highlights include learning resources; hypertext, the Internet and the World Wide Web; consideration of context of use; participatory design; and dynamics between designers and teachers and between teachers and...
Technology adoption concerns are increasingly important to understanding constructivist learning environments and learning communities. As instruction begins to move toward more open, participatory models, "end users"--both teachers and learners--are asked to take more responsibility in the learning process. Issues such as the variable implementati...
The use of electronic mail for conducting educational discussion groups is extending beyond distance learning situations into traditional classrooms. This should not be surprising since e-mail is becoming a daily learning and productivity tool for an increasing number of professionals. We believe that there is tremendous potential in the use of ele...
Peakview is a new school that is implementing a number of organizational and teaching strategies advocated by the school restructuring reform movement. Among those strategies is the infusion of more than 80 networked microcomputers and related technology and software. This evaluation study examined the impact of the technology on the school communi...
Some personal reflections on instructional design and its relation to constructivism are explored. Instructional design in its present form is out of sync with the times in that its orientation, methods, and research base are behavioristic, or positivistic. However, a constructivist theory of instructional design is possible, particularly if constr...
This case study focuses on the impact of technology in the Peakview Elementary School (Colorado) which, in order to implement organizational and teaching strategies advocated by the school restructuring reform movement, installed more than 80 networked computers and related technology. The study relied on written surveys and interviews of teachers...
In this article the authors examine elaboration theory (ET), a model for sequencing and organizing courses which was developed by Charles Reigeluth and associates in the late 1970s. The purpose of the article is to offer a critique of ET based on recent cognitive research and to offer suggestions for updating the model to reflect new knowledge.
Com...
The purpose of this article is to review from an instructional-design (ID) perspective nine teaching programs developed by
cognitive psychologists over the last ten years. Among these models, Collins' cognitive apprenticeship model has the most
explicit prescriptions for instructional design. In the article, the cognitive apprenticeship model is an...
This discussion of the relationship between two related disciplines--cognitive psychology and instructional design (ID)--characterizes instructional design as a more applied discipline, which concerns itself more with prescriptions and models for designing instruction, while instructional psychologists conduct empirical research on learning and ins...
Current models of instructional design assume that concepts are (a) classifying rules, (b) components of a more complex network or schema in memory, and (c) evaluated/taught by classification performance. Based on current research and theory, however, concepts should be viewed as conceptual tools rather than classification rules. Concepts may be sc...
Noting that automation has had an impact on virtually every manufacturing and information operation in the world, including instructional design (ID), this paper suggests three basic metaphors for automating instructional design activities: (1) computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems; (2) expert system advisor systems; and (3) com...
The purpose of this article is to examine the role an expert system can play as an intelligent job aid. The use of expert
system shells for microcomputers is discussed. We argue that instructional designers, with their competencies in consulting
with experts and representing content, are an ideal constituency for learning how to develop expert syst...
Component display theory (CDT) is used as a working example in this examination of the relationship between instructional design theory and computer assisted instruction (CAI) models. Two basic approaches to instructional design--the analytic and the holistic methods--are reviewed, and four elements of CDT are described: (1) content types, includin...
Describes weaknesses of traditional instruction and ways that instructional technology can help to correct these problems. Both hardware, such as computers and video, and soft technologies, such as methodologies and models, are considered. Possible negative side-effects of technology-based instruction are discussed and 27 references are listed. (ME...
The purpose of this article is to suggest some strategies for analyzing and organizing concepts in a given content area, following the elaboration theory of instruction. Based on three main kinds of structure — taxonomies, procedures, and models — the following principles are presented: 1) teach content structure explicitly through diagram, figures...
Procedures are among the most common kinds of content taught in many training programs. Complex procedures can be difficult
to teach effectively. Several analytic methods for simplifying procedures for initial presentation are discussed. Most of
the methods do not require analysis as thorough as an information processing task analysis, but they can...
Increasingly, instructional literature is pointing out the need for theories of instruction which are consistent with emerging cognitive psychology. Theory construction of this sort entails taking into account developing notions of the learner as a processor of information rather than a respondent to stimuli. The purpose of this article is to descr...
This paper describes a novel instructional model for sequencing, syntheizing, and summarizing subject-matter content. The importance of such models is discussed, along with the need for a significant change in the role of subject-matter structure in instruction. A zoom-lens analogy is presented to facilitate an understanding of the elaboration mode...
This paper examines knowledge of studying--knowing how and when to apply study strategies. Study strategies may be classified into three categories: memory strategies, comprehension strategies, and problem-solving strategies. Memory-study strategies help students remember what they study. Five attributes often characterize memory strategies: meanin...
1. General remarks This paper provides a broad-stroke overview of many of the forces currently shaping the practice of distance-education. These forces both shape and are shaped by practice, since they are aspects of that practice. To bring some order to the analysis, we distinguish conservative trends and forces from pro- gressive ones. Conservati...