Some time ago, when I started my position here in the Faculty of Science, I wrote about the difference between Information Technology and Instructional Technology. This topic came up again this week in conversations on campus with various colleagues and I mentioned that I’ve started to use the term ID (Instructional Design) within the Faculty to help differentiate between what my team and teams like mine do and what the traditional IT teams do. This sort of differentiation is already going on in other areas – like MIS (Management Information Systems) and I would think that those organizations that make use of MIS individuals know the difference. This changing of names certainly seems to be helping some people understand that what I do and what the SysAdmin does is different, but to many we are both “computer guys”.
The start of the conversation was the sharing of this post over at Michael Hotrum’s blog. It’s all about a “rapid e-Learning” model, and it reflects what I think is the central problem with many of the IT units out there. The idea that ID can be rolled out like IT “cheaper and quicker” seems to be all over the place, if only for the reason that the two often share an office and sometimes even share a body. In the case of the latter, there is a real tragedy as the demands placed on one role are often very different than the demands placed on the other. To stereotype, the IT people can essentially work from “spec”, knowing what the layout of a building is, knowing what specs are needed to run software, knowing what they want traffic to look like. The way that they would do a user needs assessment is very different as well. Some IT people are very proud of the fact that they don’t support applications, some don’t support the users, others support everything (hardware, user and the machine). ID is different, the medium that is used is now as often as not digitally based, so they need some skills in terms of technology integration – they need to know their toys – but outside that, they can’t not support applications, they must support the user because the ID process is an integrated experience that examines the development, delivery and evaluation of content.
So what this means to most places is that the ID person is too expensive and the IT person understands enough about the programs that are used so they can just as easily add to their roll the “essential” part of the ID role. But the ID role is not about designing websites and what courses look like to the eyes, it’s about what courses or websites are “looking” like to the brain. This is something that really needs no technology at all, well at the most it needs some manner to record the thoughts as to be able to refer to them later on.
If there is any way to try to educate the HR and upper ups out there as to this critical difference, I hope we find it. It might be that we need to form some manner of association and then like the various accountant like the CMAs have done run national TV spots as to the difference so that in the background we might at least enable people to “hear” the difference between the two designations in their mind.
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