Friday, October 12, 2007

A Quest for Instructional Design Competencies, Methods, and Tools

In today’s fast-paced, transient, global economy, instructional technology (IT) professionals have no way to manage and track performance to industry competency standards. An IT professional’s work life is constantly changing and new methods, tools, and technologies have an immediate impact on individual development. To effectively perform the functions of the instructional designer and developer roles, in any work environment, practitioners need the ability to measure and monitor their performance on industry defined competency standards. This would enable them to assess their strengths and weaknesses on core competency standards. IT professionals “have a responsibility to keep their skills current” (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2004, p. 386). Richey, Fields, Foxon, Roberts, Spannaus, and Spector (2001), claimed updating and improving one’s knowledge, skills, and abilities is an important and essential competency.

With the right measurement methods and tools professionals would be empowered to measure, score, and monitor their own performance on existing competency standards. This would also enable them to make effective decisions about their professional development and career planning activities. Similarly, employers and educational organizations would also be able to measure and monitor individual performance for recruitment, selection, placement, succession planning, training, development, and career counseling.

A literature review was conducted to identify what competencies, methods, and tools are extant in the field to enable effective performance assessment of IT professionals. The author will discuss the research problem that led to the literature search, identify prior research studies, review the literature, and explain the solution. This literature review was conducted as apart of the author’s dissertation research. In-depth coverage of the literature review and instrument development and validation results can be found in the dissertation. To learn more about the literature review findings read the article presented at the 2007 AECT Conference

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