Recently, I finished reading Top-Ten Teaching and Learning Issues, 2007 from the November 3rd, 2007 edition of Educause Quarterly. This article discusses the top-ten issues facing academic technologists/instructional designers and how “this is a particularly important time for the academic technology/instructional design profession, which is moving beyond the formative stages.”

For those of you who are now dying to know what the top-ten issues are, you can read them below:

1. Establishing and supporting a culture of evidence
2. Demonstrating improvement of learning
3. Translating learning research into practice
4. Selecting appropriate models and strategies for e-learning
5. Providing tools to meet growing student expectations
6. Providing professional development and support to new audiences
7. Sharing content, applications and application development
8. Protecting institutional data
9. Addressing emerging ethical challenges
10. Understanding the evolving role of academic technologists.

It is interesting to note that these top-ten issues group themselves into the following themes: assessment, best practices, expectations, collaboration and ethics/privacy. Personally, I believe that numbers 1 through 9 are all parts of number 10. Part of the role of academic technologists/instructional designers is to assist in the issues presented in 1-9. All of this is in addition to being the “expert resource on best practices in educational technology” and maintaining “knowledge of online methodologies, instructional design, Web and multimedia design, accessibility and adaptive learning technologies, and learning styles.”

The article goes on to emphasize that academic technologists/instructional designers need to be more integrated into the institutional culture and campus initiatives as a whole in order to effectively help set directives. In addition to this, I see that individuals in these roles also need to be actively involved with other organizations at the same institution. The pieces of design, technology, assessment and accessibility are often handled by various individuals in various departments across the institution. In order for technology to be effectively integrated into the curriculum with the ability to assess exactly how effective it is, many different units need to come together and work collaboratively to make it happen. It is difficult to design effective courses if parts of the technology are not dependable or don’t work in a manner that achieves pedagogical goals. It is nice to create a lot of interesting curricular pieces, but if there is no broad assessment of its effectiveness, is the development of the content worthwhile? Are proper accessibility guidelines being followed which match the efforts of the institution at large?

In a field which is still finding its firm footing in education, it is good to occasionally step back for a broader perspective. It’s important to not only observe how far we’ve come, but to also look at where we are currently and where we need to go in order to provide the best education for our students that we can.