Welcoming The Postmodern Approach

This past week, when we had coffee at Caribou Coffee, we talked a little about the Dills article and the postmodern approach to instructional design. At that time, I had not read the article, but some of the comments made at the coffee house spiked my curiosity. Now that I finally had a chance to pour through the article, I am even more fascinated by some of the implications of approaching instructional design in this way.

I would not be surprised if my peers in this class indicated that they were curious about the postermodern approach to instructional design after reading the article... but not 100% sold on discarding their ID toolkit and setting up a new shop! The postmodern approach to instructional design is certainly interesting--to deconstruct how things have been done all along and approach design completely void of standardization and scientifically-"proven" techniques. However, what I would imagine that we would all agree on is that using the postmodern approach in conjunction with a more formal approach might prove to be valuable (using a combined approach is actually suggested in the article). Also, the postmodern notion of focusing in on "real" social situations rather than the theoretical learning environments, which help form the structure of modern educational research is fascinating to me. I certainly believe that all instructional designers would benefit by embracing the "quality of meaning constructed in lived settings" (Dills & Romiszowski, 1997, p. 82).

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Dills, C. E., & Romiszowski, A. J. (1997). Instructional
     development paradigms. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
     Educational Technology Publications, 1997.