Technique vs.Technology: Long Live the (Well-Designed) Lecture!

"Off with their heads!"

- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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30 years ago I started my first job as an instructional designer at NCR in Dayton, OH.  I was hired in part because of my ability to design and program computer-based training in Apple Pilot; NCR had their own version of the same language.

The first major project I worked on was training for key corporate accounting policies.  The corporation had eight accounting policies that accounted for about 80% of the accounting errors made, because corporate accountants misapplied the policies.  The company was 100 years old, and many of the policies had been in place since nearly its inception.  Unfortunately, they had been modified over the years, but they had never been rewritten.  They were literally cut and pasted together! That led to a confusing mishmash of sometimes conflicting wording that was just hard to understand.

The company had tried to develop training on these policies in the past.  Their most recent effort was an interactive video disc (it was the 80's and IVD was the next best thing...not so much), which was little more than a talking head reading the policies. Needless to say, this was not very effective. If I thought the policies were hard to read in print and understand, imagine how hard they were to listen to and understand.  Or stay awake. So they asked me to design computer-based training modules for the policies

Using good instructional design principles, I did a task analysis and a needs assessment and using Gagne's instructional events, came up with a modular design that started with an overview statement of the policy, a brief review of related policies, a detailed explanation of its application, examples of its proper application and examples of its improper application.  Each module ended with a quiz that the learners had to repeat until mastery and that would loop them back to the appropriate part of the training for remediation.  I worked with a couple of corporate accountants at NCR (including one with the last name Cashdollar...is there a better name for an accountant?)  who explained how the policies were supposed to be applied.  They also developed the overview statements and examples and had to check my explanations of the policy application in the training.

I finished the first four modules, and we had a checkpoint meeting.  I didn't hear anything for days, and then I was told to stop working on the project.  I couldn't imagine what was wrong!  It was great training, everything worked well, but maybe I took too many liberties and verged too far from the policies for the corporate stuffed shirts' comfort level. It was a long couple of weeks.

Then I finally heard from the accountants.  They loved the training.  They loved it so much, that they convinced their bosses that the policies needed to be rewritten from scratch following the same format I used in the training - policy statement, related policies, policy explanation, examples, non-examples. However, I had to wait until they could get that done before I could continue with the project.

I left the company before the project was done (I only stayed at NCR for 10 months).  However, someone else finished the project, and I heard months later that corporate loved the training, that their error rate was down significantly. Personally, I think it was because they finally wrote the policies in a way they could be understood.   But f they want to credit the training, hey, I'll take that.

The take-away here is not that the computer-based training was so great, but that the technique used to develop it was effective. Technology in and of itself is never the answer.  I'm not such a hardliner as Richard Clark, who likens educational technology used to deliver instruction to the truck delivering your groceries ("The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition."). He believed that any differences found in media comparison studies (where media-based instruction is compared to traditional lecture based instruction) could be attributed to greater effort in the design of media-based instruction, not the media itself.

I'm more on Kozma's side, who asserts that eventually media will affect instruction, once you find the right medium for the right instruction. I agree with Clark that good instructional design is the most important factor; well-designed "media-free" instruction will always trump poorly designed media-enhanced instruction. However, part of the instructional design process is finding the most effective means of instructional delivery, and sometimes that includes using media and technology.

Today, it's often argued that we do our students a disservice if we don't use technology.  After all, they use technology everyday, so we should, too.  Indeed, just today I saw a post in my Facebook feed from Inside Higher Ed with the quote, "We shouldn’t use the digital revolution to continue outdated forms of higher education, like the lecture." On the one hand, I agree with Clark, that using technology to deliver a lecture does not automatically make the lecture better.  But on the other, I disagree that the lecture is an outdated mode of instruction. After all, if you think about it, what is a Ted Talk, but a lecture?  Granted, it's often a lecture that uses technology, and you can watch it online...but it's still one-way communication, the sage on the stage as we say, and it is very, very popular. In fact, one of the most popular TedTalks, Susan Cain's The Power of Introverts, uses almost no technology at all (she wears a microphone since it was delivered in an auditorium, and, of course, it was recorded). So no, the lecture is not outdated.

What should be dead - but unfortunately isn't - is the idea that technology will solve all our problems. What technology does is give us options. It doesn't give us answers. In fact, technology often makes it HARDER to do our jobs well, because in addition to being subject matter experts who can tell people what we know, we also need to be media and technology experts - or at least be willing to work with those that are.  We need to be able to somehow know when it is and it isn't appropriate to use technology and how to best use it when we do.  For me, that's easier, since I am an instructional designer as well as a teacher.  It's what I've done for 30 years.

But for many teachers and professors, they rely on their textbook publishers or other providers to tell them what to do.  And that's a danger, because their ultimate goal is to make money.  Yes, it's nice to use the latest and greatest resource from wherever, but you still need to make sure it's appropriate for your students.  You still need to structure the use of that technology. You still need to ensure that students know what they are supposed to learn, know that they've learned it, and know how to use what they've learned in the future. *cough*Gagne*cough*

And that's what I did when I designed the Key Corporate Accounting Policies training at NCR, which is why it was effective.  The technology wasn't the difference, it was the technique used.  While I made the most of the capabilities of the technology to provide remediation as needed, it was good instructional design technique that made the real difference.  The technique not only resulted in well-design CBT but better written policies.

Keep that in mind when you are being told that this technology will solve all your problems and engage your students and improve their test scores.  You still need good techniques to use it effectively.  A talking head on video is no more effective than a talking head in a classroom.  It's still just a talking head. And the talking head in the classroom can adapt.