Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were forced to develop emergency online teaching resources, mostly without any background in instructional design. After completing the readings above, what are your thoughts on instructional design as a discipline, and what might be its wider relevance for teaching, whether designing for face-to-face, blended, or online settings?
Instructional design should now more than ever be a topic of priority for professional development afforded to teachers. Teachers are masters at curating, creating, and collecting their own resources however, I find it extremely disappointing that even heading into 2022, school districts far and wide fail to provide teachers with their own working computers, tech tools, and/or training in the programs they are encouraged to use.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of teachers were left to navigate the uncharted waters where in many cases they felt isolated and with no real guidance or support. I think before we entertain the idea of instructional design being an area of focus for teachers, we need to first address of the resources available to them. In my opinion, teachers are inherently compassionate, optimistic, and self-motivated individuals and during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of those individuals had to find ways to make online learning work, and in the end, were left with the realization that the education system is ill-equipped for the current tech driven world that we live in.
I have found that many professionals in the tech industry or the medical field are provided with the tools necessary to perform their daily duties in their field. How come professionals in the education sector are an exception to these expectations?