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Lloyd Rieber
Editor’s Note: In 1998, Rieber was invited to give the 1998 Peter Dean Lecture for AECT and later published his remarks on Rieber’s own website. It is republished here by permission of the author.
Rieber, L. (1998). The proper way to become an instructional technologist. Retrieved from http://lrieber.coe.uga.edu/pdean/
Prologue
I wrote this essay to support my Peter Dean Lecture at the 1998 AECT convention. The invitation to present this lecture came only several weeks before the scheduled presentation at AECT. Consequently, there was little time to put these ideas into written form for the ITFORUM discussion that traditionally follows this lecture. Interestingly, though the lecture and discussion have long past, I have not felt it necessary to revise the essay. Despite the fact that it lacks the “scholarship polish” of a refined work, I think it still captures well my thoughts and feelings that I initially struggled to organize and convey. I presented my essay and conducted the ITFORUM discussion in the spirit of sharing some ideas as works in progress. I think this is a style that takes full advantage of electronic media—to offer a set of ideas that lead to more questions than answers and to engage a group of thoughtful people in a discussion of the ideas to tease out what is and is not important.
The purpose of the Peter Dean Lecture, as I understand it, is to choose someone who has been around long enough to appreciate the struggles of the field and to give that person the opportunity to give a critical analysis of where we are and where we might go. This presents a nice opportunity, but a presumptuous one in my opinion, for the person chosen. Are my experiences and points of view a valid cross section of the field? Obviously not. Nevertheless, I used this opportunity to speak to some issues that interest and concern me, in the hope that they might trigger some reflection and comment—I still hope that is the case for those who now happen upon this essay.
Introduction
The inspiration for the topic of my AECT presentation and this essay comes from an article published by Robert Heinich in 1984 called “The Proper Study of Educational Technology.” At the time I first read the article (around 1986), its title rubbed me the wrong way. There was something unduly pretentious about it—that there was, in fact, a proper study of instructional technology (IT). When I first read the article, I must admit that I incorrectly interpreted it. Heinich warned strongly against the “craft” of IT which I wrongly interpreted as “art.” I have long been sensitive to our field disavowing the artistic side of IT and instead overemphasizing, I felt, its scientific aspects. Having just reread the article, I am very impressed with how forward looking Heinich’s thinking was at the time, especially regarding the role of research. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is not to take issue with Heinich’s ideas, but to use them to motivate another question: What