Just as we are doing a series of shows around one topic on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast (i.e., student viewpoints), with this post, I am starting a series on the role of the instructional technologist in K-12 education.
A good place to start this series is with the IT graduate degree, whether at the Master’s or doctoral level. The following comes from the University of Virginia Curry School of Education Instructional Technology areas of study description.
“Core requirements and coursework in Instructional Technology (IT) prepare students to be leaders in any environment involving learning–K-12 schools, museum education, adult training and development in business and industry, public/non-profit training, higher education, and life-long learning.
Technology, culture, and diversity are virtually inseparable. As such, diversity plays a large role in projects students design for use inside and outside of classrooms. Faculty and students at Curry contemplate ways technology can be used to extend educational opportunities to all populations. For example, projects such as the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives celebrate past and present diversity in the immediate community and beyond. In addition, courses such as Multicultural Education and Advanced Instructional Design encourage students to explore the meaning of diversity.
Students who focus their studies in IT gain exposure to a wide range of emerging technologies while ensuring the basic competencies required of all practitioners. Graduates have found career opportunities as instructional designers, interactive developers, information architects, training and technology coordinators, and change/process management specialists in business, industry, education, and government. Others go on to become university faculty members.”
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Looking deeper into the degree pages, the Masters’s and doctoral level degrees are entitled “Curriculum and Instruction- Instructional Technology.” I could not agree more that so much of what we do as instructional technologists is about curriculum and instruction. It is good to see that the Curry School has made this shift, at least in the title, since I finished my degree in 2001. My cohort members often spoke about too much emphasis on technology and not enough on pedagogy and change management.
Now more than ever, technology is so easy to use and constantly changing that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to take courses in specific tools. Our future instructional technologists need the skills to design, collaborate, communicate, and leverage creativity in one’s learning community. One needs just enough technical know-how to understand how tools are organized by functionality to promote specific processes (e.g., to communicate, create, analyze, organize, etc.). What we do need to learn in graduate school is how to navigate and problem-solve within types of tools/apps so that when new tools come out, we are ready to interact with them. We then work to develop the lessons and tutorials to guide our students and adult learners in using the technologies.
With this technical knowledge, the instructional technologist can use his/her skill set to partner in curriculum development. I will be sharing a lot more information in future posts about the curriculum. I want to make one very important point that will run through my posts because I think it gets at the center of our work.
The instructional technologist is a learning specialist. We are not just the tech person on the sideline in curriculum meetings waiting for an opening to do our tech integration thing. We are teachers and curriculum specialists who participate in all aspects of curriculum design. From discussing and determining the learning outcomes to helping create assessments and rubrics to designing the learning activities, the fully functioning instructional technologist not only participates but often helps facilitate the curriculum review process.
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