This paper offers an emerging interpretive framework for understanding the active role instructional designers play in the transformation of learning systems in higher education. A 3-year study of instructional designers in Canadian universities revealed how, through reflexive critical practice, designers are active, moral, political, and…

Distance education, increasingly dubbed online learning and even e-learning, represents an important societal movement, as witnessed by the sudden emergence of a worldwide knowledge industry in which universities play a central role. Many universities, in implementing e-learning, have undertaken a process whereby faculty are being encouraged to…

Augustana (located in Camrose, Alberta, Canada, and formerly known as Augustana University College) is an undergraduate liberal arts and sciences faculty of the University of Alberta with an enrollment of approximately 1,100 students. The fall of 2001 marked the inception of for-credit discipline-specific information literacy (IL) course offerings…

Instructional development, a systematic way of applying standards of critical thought to the design of instructional materials and programs, is advocated for its potential contribution to consistency of instructional purposes and actions, adaptability, and internal accountability. Steps in the systematic method, the evaluation problem, and choice…

Discussion of the growth of telecommunications initiatives in high school instruction in Canada focuses on the Distance Learning in Small Schools pilot project in Alberta. Topics addressed include delivery systems models, teacher response, staffing, concerns about loss of interaction and feedback, design of distance education materials, approaches…

This paper describes the work in progress of a research team at LICEF Research Center, Tele-universite (Canada) in developing an object-oriented model of a computer-enriched high school, with the goal of bringing about a new vision of education through the use of technology. The model facilitates decision-making by offering a global and integrated…

Although the teaching of listening has been mandated in Alberta, Canada for nearly ten years, little assistance has been available to help teachers develop effective instructional strategies for teaching the subject. This paper describes the Calgary Listening Inquiry Project (CLIP), a collaborative action research project currently functioning in…

The planning, design, development, and implementation of a conference of Canadian German teachers to promote a collaborative, decentralized approach to professional development are described. The report begins with an overview of the professional development situation among German teachers in Canada. Particular focus is on efforts to make…

This booklet, the first in a series of four volumes on the Designing a Curriculum (Dacum) process, is intended to explain to Dacum workshop participants exactly what Dacum is and why it was created. The first section of the guide traces the development of Dacum as a program planning model that was established in the late 1960s in response to the…

This booklet, the second in a series of four volumes on the Designing a Curriculum (Dacum) process, is intended to familiarize prospective Dacum workshop participants with the goals and procedures of the workshop. The first section of the booklet comprises a description of a Dacum workshop as a means of bringing together educators and employers to…

Pedagogy embodies the beliefs one holds about students, about the various attributes of media technologies, and about the essential qualities of the content at hand. Teachers make decisions based on the interactions of these beliefs. Therefore, it is imperative to begin the process of designing and contemplating instruction with a consideration of…

This booklet, the fourth in a series of four volumes on the Designing a Curriculum (Dacum) process, is intended to assist instructors and trainers in examining some of the issues involved in translating a Dacum chart and curriculum objectives into an instructional program. Discussed first are various points of view as to where program development…