Page 81 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

70 4 Systems Perspective of Educational Technology

4.3 Educational Technology from a System’s Perspective

Educational technology is an area that uses systematic methods to analyze educa-
tional problems, design and develop instructional systems to support learning.
A system’s perspective views the various elements and interactions in a systemic
manner, functioning in a well-ordered manner just as a healthy human body with its
various subsystems functioning in a well-ordered manner. In addition to that sys-
temic perspective, instructional designers and educational technologists typically
employ systematic methods and processes to ensure that stable instructional systems
result. This systemic view and the associated systematic methods and processes have
evolved over time, as indicated in the brief overview of recent educational tech-
nology history (see Spector & Ren, 2015, for a more comprehensive treatment).

4.3.1 Five Stages of Educational Technology

Educational technologies have evolved from simple texts to highly complex and
interactive digital systems. Table 4.1 depicts a simplified view of that development.
The important point here is that education systems have become very complex,
which results in the increasing challenges in designing, developing, implementing,
and supporting these systems.

4.3.2 Typical Educational Technology Systems

With the use of technology in education system, the educational technology sys-
tems are changing rapidly. The typical educational technology systems developed

Table 4.1 Historical stages of educational technology development
Development phase Components Examples
Intuitive instruction teachers, students, textbooks with text and pictures,
(seventeenth and eighteenth textbooks along with physical objects and
centuries) models
Visual instruction the previous components slides, silent movies
(nineteenth and twentieth plus visual artifacts
centuries)
Audiovisual instruction more complex media enter educational television
(1920s–1950s) into consideration
Audiovisual early networked system PLATO
communication begin to appear
(1950s–1970s)
Information and digital media, large media interactive computing systems,
communication repositories, changing augmented and virtual realities, social
technologies (1970s to technologies networking, etc.
present)