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A Brief History of ISD

Anyone working in ISD should know some of the history of the field and how various, somewhat loosely linked areas of academic research led to the work we perform today. Instructional design is a professional endeavor that doesn’t rely on a rich history or linkage with anyone particularly famous outside of academia to bolster its image or to feed its success. In fact, it sometimes seems to delight in its somewhat obscure origins. For those reasons and others, this brief unofficial history of ISD is offered as a background to fill in this vacuum of information.

While this anonymity isn’t a negative, spending a little time looking at how ISD evolved certainly adds a foundation of confidence to new designers and a historical background to the more experienced. There are some very important personalities and moments in the development of ISD as we know it today that are worth reviewing. And, a brief look back reveals that ISD has a rich professional heritage and direct connections to its building blocks of education, psychology, and systems.

To capture a sense of the history of instructional design, it is necessary to suspend for a moment the oft-held but erroneous notion that ISD is a recent discovery or that there was at any point a beginning that can be dated or confirmed. One person learning from another has no meaningful historical beginning except perhaps the dawn of civilization, and even knowing the date would add little to the credibility of ISD. Teaching and learning are ingrained behaviors and instructional design at its core is simply a more efficient way to pass knowledge.

That being said, some accurate historical reference is possible, given our knowledge of the personalities and documentation that have built the foundation of ISD as we know it today. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Robert Gagné, Robert Mager, Robert Skinner, Benjamin Bloom, Donald Kirkpatrick, J. Marvin Cook, and hundreds of others provided the foundation for the practice of instructional design. What has changed exponentially over the last 70 years is the manner in which ISD has matured and gained visibility.

Let’s look at several key elements of ISD and how they relate to form the system we identify today as instructional systems development.

Systems Theory

At the base of the modern instructional systems approach to curriculum development is the foundational work on systems theory by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1940s. Systems theory teaches us that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. In ISD terms this means that using a system to develop education and training programs provides the best opportunity to bring learners to mastery.

Systems are everywhere in our world and are more a fact of life than the famous “death and taxes” absolutes often wistfully evoked. In fact, systems include death and taxes and everything else in our lives. There is a system associated with every facet of our world, and the more we recognize that logic, the more we are able to function efficiently and effectively. The recognition that training and education are both systems leads us directly to the logical notion that curriculum development is more productive when utilizing a systems approach like ISD. In fact, system is its middle name.

Educational Mentors and Milestones

Once the systems foundation was in place, it was time for the great minds in education and psychology to define the system elements within the instructional design process. The theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of modern ISD are supported by the work of seven ISD mentors: B.F. Skinner, Benjamin Bloom, Robert Mager, Robert Glaser, Robert Gagné, Donald Kirkpatrick, and J. Marvin Cook. The early practice of ISD thinking didn’t yet have a name, but it certainly had direction toward a process that allowed for efficient and replicable instruction and training.

B.F. Skinner

Best known as the father of behaviorism as first presented in his book The Behavior of Organisms (Skinner 1938), Skinner was responsible for much of the early thinking in the area of operant behavior. As a result of his research, he created the operant conditioning chamber, more commonly known as the Skinner box, which was key in demonstrating his theories’ practical impact (Figure 2-1). Skinner, who won the National Medal of Science Award in 1968, wrote more than 18 books and published nearly 180 articles on the topic.

Figure 2-1. The Skinner Box

During World War II, Skinner initiated and worked on the top-secret Project Orcon, which eventually proved that pigeons could be trained to steer missiles toward ships in the pre-radar days of the war. While never implemented, Orcon did show that operant conditioning was more than a theoretical construct. While Skinner’s work with animals is interesting, it is the nexus to human learning and the behaviorist approach to course design that sets his work apart.

Skinner later devised a teaching machine that provided practice and feedback much in the same way a tutor reviews content with a student and provides necessary content correction. The teaching machine didn’t actually “teach” anything new; it was the process of providing learners practice and feedback that later influenced the way lesson plans are designed in the practice of ISD today.

Through his sequencing of learning events and the need for reinforcement and feedback in the learning process, Skinner would influence Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction. Skinner’s work paved the way for efficient instructional design and increased mastery in learners.

Benjamin Bloom

Bloom’s taxonomy is a mainstay in modern education and training, and relates to the six levels of complexity in cognitive thought (Figure 2-2). There are different versions of these taxonomies for three of the objective domains covered in chapter 10, namely cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Bloom is called the father of outcome-based education (OBE).

Figure 2-2. Bloom’s Taxonomy

The latest version of Bloom’s taxonomy has six levels and is hierarchical in nature. The levels, from entry to exit, are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. These directly relate to the content mastery continuum that is covered in chapter 18.

Bloom’s major contribution to ISD is his classifications of hierarchal learning stages that reflect learner progress on a continuum from novice to expert or entry to exit. This acknowledgment of the importance of sequencing content in instructional design is a key building block of ISD as practiced today. Without this recognition of a learner’s hierarchical journey to mastery, there is no design process for the staging of content in even the most basic content areas.

Robert Mager

The concept related to behavioral objectives is considered by most ISD practitioners as the one irreplaceable element of instructional design. You would be hard pressed to find any professionally designed education or training course without them. We have Robert Mager to thank for that fact. The maturation of behavioral objectives from essentially goal statements, such as understand and learn, to sophisticated four-part objectives is a direct result of Mager’s work.

Mager wrote that behavioral objectives should have three parts: behavior, condition, and standard. These are similar to the concepts of audience, behavior, condition, and degree discussed later in this book. Mager’s 1962 work, Preparing Instructional Objectives, set the groundwork for criterion-referenced approaches to objectives and evaluation. ISD might never have matured as it has without his contributions.

Robert Glaser

While early systems theory was advanced by von Bertalanffy in the 1940s, by the 1960s systems theory had evolved to a more operational level in education and training as Robert Glaser began writing about instructional systems. His system of instruction, as introduced in his 1962 work, Psychology and Instructional Technology, consisted of instructional goals, entering behavior, instructional procedures, and performance assessment (Figure 2-3).

Figure 2-3. Glaser’s System of Instruction

Today, the ADDIE model of ISD as presented in this book consists of the elements of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.

Glaser coined the term terminal when referring to the final or end mastery for a learner. Current practitioners speak of terminal and enabling objectives; between Mager and Glaser, then, we have the foundation for both systems and objectives. Glaser was responsible for advancing the discussion of what he perceived as the differences between training and learning.

Robert Gagné

Although most often remembered for his Nine Events of Instruction, Robert Gagné also had a profound influence on the early foundational work of ISD as a process. His work with Leslie Briggs brought forth the concept and later the practice of breaking courses into discrete learning events and building instruction after thoroughly analyzing each element. This systems approach to instructional design evolved into the formalized ISD process used today.

Gagné’s work on his five categories of learning outcomes—specifically, intellectual skills, verbal information, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and attitudes—has greatly influenced the evolution of objectives domains and increased exponentially the depth and detail required in the practice of writing objectives and focusing them on specific domains or categories of learning (Figure 2-4).

Figure 2-4. Gagné’s Five Categories of Learning Outcomes

Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction are still the basis of most lesson plans and find success in any type of learning delivery system, from online and distance learning to more traditional classroom or blended courses. These nine events will be discussed further in chapter 12.

Donald Kirkpatrick

Donald Kirkpatrick first wrote about the four levels of evaluation in his PhD dissertation in 1954 and then published his landmark work, Evaluating Training Programs, in 1959. His work has changed the way instructional designers and everyone involved in training and education look at evaluation. Without this brilliant, yet humble man and his work, we might still be thinking about evaluation as customer satisfaction instead of mastery of learning.

The first iteration of the four levels included reaction, learning, behavior, and results (Figure 2-5). Since then, some have added a fifth level called return on investment or return on expectation. No matter the labeling, the implications for training and the evaluation of learning now have a detailed and thoughtful approach to multidimensional evaluative approaches.

In the years since the levels were first published, the notion of evaluation without these four added dimensions would be considered unacceptable in any professional practice of ISD. From the Level 1 smile sheet to the mandatory Level 2 mastery evaluations most used by professional instructional designers, Kirkpatrick’s work is one of the milestones in ISD.

Figure 2-5. Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation

J. Marvin Cook

One of the milestones that ushered in the acceptance and professional standing of ISD was the creation of academic courses and programs associated with the theory and practice of instructional design. Throughout the country, degree programs began to emerge at Florida State, Ohio State, Indiana, Syracuse, and other outstanding universities.

In 1968 the newly opened University of Maryland, Baltimore County, approved its first graduate program—instructional systems development, under the leadership of J. Marvin Cook. This important milestone provided ISD with both graduate-level standing and an academic visibility that allowed the process to grow and flourish in a supportive academic environment.

Cook’s work within the K-12, military, and corporate environments stands as a testament to ISD’s utility and the fact that instructional design is not dependent on a particular population, implementation modality, or learning environment. His 1976 book, A Classroom Guide for the Successful Teacher: A Systematic Approach, was used in the K-12 learning and design environment for years and was one of the first publications to address instructional design for K-12 classroom teachers.

Cook was mentor to thousands and is still active in the UMBC master’s program, where the annual Dr. J. Marvin Cook Award is given to a graduate student showing exceptional promise in the field of ISD. Thousands of designers now hold advanced degrees and graduate-level certificates, thanks to Cook’s efforts and those of the other early academic supporters of ISD at UMBC and other universities with programs in instructional design.

Where It All Leads From Here

With the advent of online learning and the more traditional distance learning coming into a new era of acceptance, ISD has never been more necessary or appreciated. While it is important to recognize how instructional design gained acceptance and flourished, a new generation of designers and learning professionals will take ISD to the next level, one that can’t even be imagined yet, and that is the strength of this process. No matter what the challenge, going back to the basics of ISD will lead designers to solutions regardless of the population, technology, or delivery system.

In Conclusion

Because ISD has very little in the way of a written history beyond the occasional graphic, short mention, or blog post, most instructional designers struggle to explain how ISD came to be the industry standard it is today. Having a sense of the important milestones and personalities in ISD provides a strong foundation in support of the practice of instructional design and adds a necessary level of credibility. Because ISD is most often associated with process, not personalities, having some knowledge of these important early leaders in our field brings life and depth to the science of instructional design.

Discussion Questions

1.  Why do you think so little has been written about the history of ISD?

2.  Is there anyone or anything you would add to the history of ISD?

3.  How does knowing some history of ISD affect the work of an instructional designer?