The history of the field of instructional design and technology in the United States

By Salahalgabli

  • After World War II

    Many of the psychologists responsible for the success of the military training programs continued to work on instructional issues immediately after World War II. For this goal, organizations such as the American Institutes for Research were created. Late in the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, psychologists employed by such organizations began to consider training as a system and created a variety of new analysis, design, and evaluation techniques.

  • The programmed instruction movement

    The programmed instruction movement, which lasted from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, also had a significant role in the evolution of the systems approach. In 1954, B.F. Skinner's article The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching initiated what may be termed a modest revolution in the field of education.

  • The 1960s

    Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruction (1962) was written by Robert Mager in the early 1960s to teach educators how to develop objectives. Criterion-referenced testing also contributed to the instructional design process in the early 1960s. The first edition of Robert Gagné's The Conditions of Learning was published in 1965. (1965b).
    After seeing the Soviet achievement, the US invested millions in math and science education in 1957.

  • The 1970s

    Michael Scriven (1967) dubbed this process of trial and revision formative evaluation, in contrast to what he termed summative evaluation, the measuring of instructional effectiveness. The number of instructional design models rose dramatically during the 1970s. Many persons have established new methods for methodically structuring teaching, building on the work of their predecessors (e.g., Dick & Carey, 1978; Gagné & Briggs, 1974; Gerlach & Ely, 1971; Kemp, 1971).

  • The 1980s

    Growth and Redirection In many sectors, the interest in instructional design that burgeoned during the previous decade continued to grow during the 1980s. Interest in the instructional design process remained strong in business and industry (Bowsher, 1989; Galagan, 1989) the military (Chevalier, 1990; Finch, 1987; McCombs, 1986;) and in the international arena (Ely & Plomp, 1986: Morgan, 1989)

  • The 1990s

    Changing Perspectives and Methods Throughout the 1990s, a number of changes had a substantial impact on instructional design ideas and methods. One of the most significant inspirations was the performance technology movement, which widened the instructional design field's reach.