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Talk
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Instructional Designers Perceptions of Their
Agency Tales of Change and Community

• Katy Campbell, University of Alberta
• Rick Kenny, Athabasca University
• Richard Schwier, University of Saskatchewan

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Traditional ID Practice

• Linear, systematic, prescriptive approach
• Design of neutral learning environments in
  isolation from learning contexts
• Actual ID practice varies with context
• Align ID with design sciences?

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Instructional Design as Moral Practice

• Agency refers to doing implies power
• Designer agency most powerful from foundation of
  moral coherence
• Moral coherence when designer's values align with
  those of clients their institutions.

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Research Design

• 3 year, SSHRC funded, study
• 49 research conversations with gt 20 IDers
• Narrative inquiry storying of experience
• Purpose to capture participants
• cultural constructions of experience
• seminal personal professional encounters
• moral ethical development
• understanding of work as IDers

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Why Narrative Inquiry?

• Socially constructed practice socially
  constructed description
• Mimics natural conversations
• Implies relationship moral dimension with
  action learning
• Locates narratives develops social history,
  social geography contextual, shared commentary

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And especially because

• Narrative important for community building,
  practical reasoning, personal perspective,
  semantic innovation
• Design is active
• Narrative has moral, emotional, aesthetic,
  intellectual dimensions
• and so does ID

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Conversation as Inquiry (the argument)

• reflexivity
• voice
• critical subjectivity
• power/authority

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Instructional Design as Conversation (the stories)

• reflexivity
• voice
• critical subjectivity
• power/authority

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The Multivariate Nature of Agency
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Interpersonal Agency

• Bi-directional, moral commitment to other people
  involved in projects
• Emphasis on collegial engagement advocacy for
  learners
• I need to be the learner before there is one. I
  design for people who don't usually have a voice
  in what happens to them in their educational
  lives, and I have to be their voice until they
  can speak for themselves.

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Professional Agency

• Feeling of responsibility to the profession
• Act in professionally competent ethical manner
• I needed to synthesize a wide range
  of experiences and educational considerations in
  order to make decisions. I often felt the need to
  vet these decisions with experienced designers
  however, I also needed to prove that I was
  capable of being a designer in my own
  right. Finding an appropriate balance was a
  challenge.

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Institutional Agency

• Considers the way that IDers align work with
  institutional goals
• May be expressed in tension felt between
  organizational goals and personal values
• There are some really huge issues that are moving
  forward in distance education, especially
  technology- enhanced learning issues. If the
  institutions-the academies-do not look at these
  issues very seriously, very soon, they're going
  to find themselves in policy nether land, where
  nothing works.

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Societal Agency

• Need to know work contributing to more
  significant societal influence
• Disconnect between perceived responsibility
  authority to influence change
• It's one of those things where you feel-you
  know-you make a difference. You know you have an
  impact at times, and sometimes you come away
  feeling really good about it. But rarely do I
  feel like it's a consistent difference. Rarely do
  I feel like it's a widespread margin of
  difference to my liking. So, I'm more frustrated
  than I am satisfied with the level of difference
  I make. I'm always looking to have impact on a
  large scale.

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The Multivariate Nature of Agency
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Intentional Dimension of Agency

• Related to principles or values associated with
  actions
• Deciding which things are important those
  things we mean to do.
• Personal judgments about what is significant,
  preferential, moral or ethical
• Risk of making design decisions inconsistent with
  underlying intentions of the work

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Operational Dimension of Agency

• Practical implications or expression of
  particular intentions, principles or values.
• Deal with concrete actions or outcomes.
• Several operational expressions can be consistent
  with single intentional dimension

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The Multivariate Nature of Agency
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Advice to the Designer

• ID is social practice, not rote application of
  instructional models.
• Change agency involves moral relationships
• Actions are not value neutral.
• Consider how intentional operational
  dimensions of design may conflict.
• Units of faculty development work closely with
  faculty designers to align values.

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Advice to the Grad Programs

• Avoid exclusive focus on mastery of tools.
• Engage student designers in early identity work
  via
• autobiographical writing
• deconstruction of situated experiences via group
  conversations
• working with cases based on ethical dilemmas
• developing international links project teams
  that challenge cultural assumptions about
  learning
• internship placements that either align with (or
  challenge) designers developmental stage,
  experience and beliefs.

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Contacts

• katy.campbell_at_ualberta.ca
• rickk_at_athabasca.ca
• richard.schwier_at_extfc.usask.ca
• This study was funded by the Social Sciences and
  Humanities Research Council (Canada)

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Stay Tuned!

Whats next! Participants interested in being
included in the new year line up are invited to
email a proposal to Brenda Koritko
bkoritko_at_sympatico.ca