History of Instructional Design

Much of the foundation of the field of instructional design was laid in World War Two, when the U.S. military faced the need to rapidly train large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks, from field-stripping a carbine to navigating across the ocean to building a bomber.

Drawing on the research and theories of B.F. Skinner on stimulus-response learning, training programs focused on observable behaviors. Tasks were broken down into subtasks, and each subtask treated as a separate learning goal. Training was designed to reward correct performance and remediate incorrect performance. Mastery was assumed to be possible for every learner, given enough repetition and feedback.

After the war, the success of the wartime training model was replicated in business and industrial training, and to a lesser extent in the primary and secondary classroom. In 1955 Benjamin Bloom published an influential taxonomy of what he termed the three domains of learning: Cognitive (what we know or think), Psychomotor (what we do, physically) and Affective (what we feel, or what attitudes we have). These taxonomies still influence the design of instruction.

In the 1960’s, psychologist Jean Piaget studied the cognitive development of children, identifying several discrete phases they go through as they grow. Very young children are only able to process concrete, operational information; they are incapable of thinking abstractly, reflecting on the past, or projecting into the future. Older children develop these abilities over time.

In the 1970s Seymour Papert drew on Piaget’s ideas to create LOGO, a simple computer-programming language that let children control the movement of a simulated turtle by giving it simple commands such as “forward 10 units” and “turn right 90 degrees.”

Learning theories were influenced by the growth of digital computers in the 1960s and 1970s. Many models adopted an “information-processing” approach.

In the 1980s and 1990s the growing influence of postmodernism in academic culture began to be felt in instructional design with the rise of constructivist theories. Some of the more radical theorists rejected any notion that knowledge existed apart from an individual’s experience, or that it could be transmitted from a “teacher” to a “student.” Some hold that all knowledge is “socially constructed” and that there is no such thing as objective truth. Others merely allow that the learner is not a tabula rasa and comes to the lesson with a unique set of experiences, knowledge, skills, and attitudes; and that fact must influence the design of the lesson.

A counterpoint to constructivism came in the late 20th century with cognitive learning theory, which provides models based on research on how the human brain processes and stores information. One branch of cognitive learning theory that is gaining currency in the early 21st century is Cognitive Load Theory.