12.4 INTO THE 21st CENTURY

Perhaps the greatest difference between contemporary and traditional technology research is the shift to thinking and learning processes versus outcomes. Research has evolved to emphasize learning with media and developing technology to support and optimize thinking, learning, and teaching processes. Several trends have emerged, though often their initial impetus derives from outside the educational technology-instructional design field.

Based on trends in research on teaching, learning, and educational technology, four categories of future research have been identified: new design methods, tools for thinking and learning, classroom applications, and expanded theory and research. Eleven research thrusts, embedded within the four categories, are likely to dominate educational technology research into the 21st century.

12.4.1 New Design Methods

12.4.1.1. Development of Alternative Design Strategies. Emerging technologies have increased dramatically the toolkit for designing learning environments. New technologies have enabled the creation and testing of design strategies heretofore considered unknown or impractical (Perkins & Unger, 1994; see Chapter 23). Alternatives have already been implemented based on the visions and models of researchers and theorists. For example, emerging technologies have helped to build rich scenarios for problem-based teaching and learning. Learning has been anchored within familiar, meaningful contexts, providing cognitive apprenticeships and authentic learning experiences (see for example, Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992a, 1992b; Eylon & Linn, 1988). Efforts to discover strategies that unleash, versus harness, human and technological capabilities will continue to emerge.

12.4.1.2. Rapid Prototyping of Innovative Designs and Strategies. Although emerging technologies offer significant potential for improving teaching and learning, they also complicate design and development considerably. Often technology obscures the balance between what should be and what could be produced. Prototyping allows the rapid construction and testing of design concepts (Gayeski, 1991; Henson & Knezek, 1991). Unlike traditional design models, rapid prototyping does not require full specification prior to development. Instead, it focuses on the creation of working models of a limited scale, which are, themselves, modified through successive iterations. Rapid prototyping offers a flexible, nonlinear approach to design, making it especially well suited for developing products of unknown initial design (Tripp & Bichelmeyer, 1990). This provides an important alternative to traditional design processes because it reduces "blind" detailing and costs associated with planning while emphasizing design creativity and flexibility. Future research is needed to understand better the strengths, limitations, and cost effectiveness of such alternative design processes (see Jones, Li & Merrill, 1992).

12.4.1.3. Hybridization of Analog Technologies into Digital Formats. The transition from analog to digital formats is accompanied by problems of storage, image fidelity, access time, manipulability, and portability. With increased digital storage capacity, comprising billions of data points, the cognitive burden associated with navigating, retrieving, sorting, and thinking must be addressed. If carefully managed by designers and/or learners, powerful alternatives can be provided to support learning; if not thoughtfully designed, however, the cognitive burdens can be substantial. Future research will emphasize not simply the development of new digital formats but how they can best be organized, configured, and accessed to support teaching, learning, and thinking.

12.4.2 Tools for Thinking and Learning

12.4.2.1. Tools and Resources That Aid in the Construction of Knowledge. Whereas tools and resources traditionally focused on mastery of external bodies of knowledge via on-line, direct instruction, contemporary notions focus on facilitating knowledge construction by relating new ideas to personal knowledge, beliefs, and experiences (see 23.4.1, 24.2, 24.3). Construction involves the creation, or revision, of how one thinks or reasons. Therefore, knowledge construction via tools and resources is not simply additive in nature but also allows the learner to alter the manner in which knowledge is represented and manipulated (see, for example, Derry & Lajoie, 1993; Jonassen, 1996; Scardamalia et al., 1989; White & Fredericksen, 1987, as cited in Striley, 1988). Emerging computer technologies have the capacity to augment needed intellectual endeavors as well as supplant unnecessary cognitive resources previously required. Future research will shed light on the varied ways this can be accomplished.

12.4.3 Classroom Applications

12.4.3.1. Innovative Classrooms and Reinvented Schools. Emerging technologies have recently spawned the creation of powerful incubators for innovative classrooms and reinvented schools. While emerging technologies have played important roles in these change processes, researchers need to become immersed in mediating issues, such as research on effective schools, school change, and the adoption and diffusion of innovation. The path to innovative, reinvented schools is not simply one of designing an idealized technology-enhanced learning environment, but one of understanding the history and culture of formal schooling. Future research should continue to emphasize not only how emerging technologies can support learning but also how to develop both idealistic and realistic visions given the social and political realities of schools, students, and communities.

12.4.3.2. Optimization of Both Learner and Technological Capability. In order to optimize technological capabilities, we need to understand better what technologies do best: process, present, store, and retrieve information and images on demand. These capabilities can be managed to engage students in thinking and learning while concurrently supporting specific teaching strategies. Optimization of human capabilities, however, where individuals are empowered to reflect deeply about meaning problems, is also critical. Students can solve problems within authentic contexts, manipulate information in real, compressed, or slowed time, and engage in activities designed to promote critical thinking (see 23.4).

12.4.4 Theory and Research

12.4.4.1. Integrated Views of Teaching, Learning, and Technologies. Traditional instructional technology research has focused on media issues such as hardware and software design, automation of instructional practices, learner control, and so forth. Often these issues have been studied in isolation from the contexts within which teaching and learning occur. Integrated approaches help researchers identify and understand the role of context in relating findings to educational practice. Future research will continue to integrate media issues within the diverse contexts of teaching and learning, and focus on alternative strategies for conceptualizing, organizing, and managing learning processes. This approach is important not only because it addresses pressing educational needs but also because it bridges gaps in everyday practice. Research will emphasize the complexity of learning in context rather than the simplicity of decontextualized learning.

12.4.4.2. Clarification of Relationships Among Teaching, Learning, and Technology. Often research has examined teaching, learning, or technology as discrete, separate elements. It has become increasingly important to clarify the interdependent nature of these elements. Research on teaching, learning, and technological processes will help researchers to understand better how, when, why, and for what purposes elements should be combined. It will also help develop rationales and beliefs for designing and developing learning systems. The outcomes of this research should produce better ways for teachers to teach, students to learn, and technologies to support the processes of teaching, learning, and thinking.

12.4.4.3. Redefinition of Research Problems and Assessment Methods. New designs require new assessment methods. Emerging technologies offer a wide range of capabilities for designing, as well as assessing, process outcomes (Clark, 1994; see 23.4.6). Yet, for the most part, these capabilities have been underutilized, and the methods for assessing impact have gone undeveloped. Emerging technologies have the capability to not only address existing questions but also to redefine the questions themselves. As implementations raise new, often novel questions and issues, research methods will need to evolve accordingly. Ideally, as we gamer a greater sense of power as researchers, we will better shape the future of such applications.

12.4.4.4. The Study of Expertise. The study of expertise is concerned with how individuals acquire understanding and insight and become increasingly self-sufficient. In effect, it is the developmental process through which novices become more capable in a domain (see, for example, Spiro & Jehng, 1990; White, 1984). Its study focuses on the tasks confronting new learners in complex domains, the initial beliefs they derive, and how beliefs are modified through experience. Expertise reflects the products of experiences and the derivation of domain - and strategic knowledge. The study of expertise presents unique opportunities. We need a better understanding of how individuals become increasingly capable and how technologies can provide experiences that are representative of varied phases in the expertise continuum.

12.4.4.5. Evolution of New, Integrated Theories. As the instructional technology knowledge base builds, researchers need to connect the research and theory from allied disciplines. This will require IT researchers to be more closely aligned with disciplines such as mathematics and science education, teacher preparation, psychology, computer science, and so forth. This linkage will provides a vehicle for IT researchers to understand and benefit from others research while also building IT theory, knowledge, and expertise.