Page 20 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

1.1 Introducing Educational Technology 7
• Instruction—which is intended to support, facilitate, or enhance learning and
performance (Gagné, 1985; Spector, 2015)
• Instructional design—the planning, creation, refinement, selection, sequencing,
managing and evaluating activities and resources in support of targeted goals
and objectives (Spector, 2015)
• Intentional learning—goal-oriented, purposeful learning common in formal
learning, and workplace learning situations
• Lifelong learning—learning that is ongoing through an individual’s life; it is
typically voluntary, self-selected, and self-regulated; such efforts may be asso-
ciated with personal interests or professional goals (sometimes called life-wide
learning)
• Media—a means of representing, presenting, disseminating, and storing infor-
mation in a variety of formats, some of which may be digital
• Multimodal resources—resources that exist in multiple formats and modalities
including text, audio, video, animations, graphics, simulations, and virtual and
augmented realities; also known as multimedia resources; the explosion of
multimodal resources in the digital era has created a need to develop informa-
tion, technology, visual literacy, and digital literacy in addition to traditional
language literacy
• Non-formal learning—a form of learning that exists between formal and
informal learning that is typically somewhat structured, may have goals, and is
often associated with organized activities; much adult learning falls into this
fuzzy category which includes such activities as cooking, dance, and reading
clubs (see http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/recognitionofnon-
formalandinformallearning-home.htm)
• Technology—the practical and purposeful application of knowledge (a tradi-
tional definition linked to the etymology of the term from the Greek—techné,or
skill, and logos, or reason); popular usage involves physical things as in
smartphones, tablet computers, interactive whiteboards, and so on; in the con-
text of educational technology and consistent with the AECT definition, it is the
use and application of knowledge in the form of technology, media, procedures,
and resources to support various aspects of learning, instruction, and perfor-
mance that comprise the focus of educational technology.

1.1.4 Relevant Principles

• People learn what they do; this principle is derived from behavioral psychology
(e.g., reinforcing a desired behavior makes it more likely to recur) and finds
support in neural science (e.g., when an action is repeated often, the neural
connections in the brain associated with that action are strengthened, making it
more likely to recur in the future); an implication of this basic principle is that
learning activities should be designed with desired future performance in mind.