Week 8 Reflection

According to chapter 14 of “Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology” by Reiser and Dempsey who describe the relevance and impact of instructional technologies in the business and Industry field. Actually, I thought this reflection difficult to write compared to the previous reflections in this course because I am only familiar with one of the field of education which is relevant to my major and my future career. However, after reading chapter 18, I conclude two noteworthy ways Instructional Design/Technology has been used in business & industry that I believe could be usefully applied to my own professional work.

The most interesting method that author talk about it is “virtual teams” which refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, FAX, and video or voice conferencing services in order to collaborate. I am already seeing this in my university in my country. Studying in Saudi Arabia are separate (girls in a different building from boys) and sometimes the professor explaining a lecture to both boys and girls at the same time. The professor is in the class of boys but the girls can see the professors by screens as a live broadcast. So, those webcams on professors’ classes and every so often they connect in live video conversations with professors across the college to share ideas. I think this is very beneficial for the staff and the students. Instructional technology has also cut down on time and money because in that situation the university can save the salary for another professor to teach girls.

Moreover, there is no more paper and pencils in many exams because the question is multiple choices true and false, even match, the instructor can save time and money by using electronic correction. Further, there are many technological methods that save lots of money in a budget for schools and colleges because they use word processors which we have made things easy to edit, copy, print and more instead of using a huge amount of papers that cost money, effort, and a waste of time. Plus, Email has also opened up communication and made it easier to pass information through the schools and their districts.

One more significant way that I can apply it to my own professional work (good in education and business and industry) which is employee training? In the education field, all teachers need to training for some new technological systems, devices, and using websites. I believe that each technology has some special ways to use it. For instance, if a school has smart boards recently, I think all teachers have to attend training on how to use this technology. I suggest creating a video to guide instructors how to use the smartboard. I believe that video will be a great tool to activate using Instructional Design/Technology. By using the video the administration did not have to find a place and time to gather all the teachers in the district together to teach them to use the smart board. Also, They also did not need to spend the money to hire someone to instruct the teachers how to use the new smart board.