Scholars representing the field of systems science were asked to identify what they considered to be the most exciting and imaginative work currently being done in their field, as well as how that work might change our understanding. The scholars included Alexander Christakis, Debora Hammond, Michael Jackson, Alexander Laszlo, Ian Mitroff, Dave…

As a final part of this special issue, six Contributing Editors of the magazine were asked to review the six articles and to briefly reflect on themes across fields, on ideas or areas that might have the most potential, and/or to offer other new ideas for our field that the articles and issue overall triggered. These senior scholars in our field…

Clark (2011) recently reviewed literature on cognitive phenomena such as automaticity, non-conscious processing, and the "illusion of conscious will," concluding that most learning theories and instructional design models are informed by faulty assumptions regarding psychological functioning--namely, that most cognitive activity is conscious and…

This article seeks to reflect, summarize, and present preexisting understandings from multiple interrelated realms of theory and practice--including diffusion of innovations, needs assessment, change management, systemic change, performance improvement, and what might be described as "socio-culturally cognizant" educational technology--in order to…

This article describes an approach to identifying, capturing, and implementing the active ingredients that account for the differences found when instructional and motivational research interventions are compared in empirical research. The goal of the article is to describe a research-to-practice model and questions that support the effective…

Educational reform efforts have failed to create widespread improvement. The authors argue that rather than trying to improve the existing system of education, a new learner-centered paradigm is needed that supports individualized learning. Such a significantly different system of education will require the systemic application of technology to…

Today's electronic textbooks (e-texts) are technologically backward and over-priced. Yet publishers continue to press for contracts with colleges and universities that move toward the mandatory purchase by students of e-texts instead of printed books. The author lays out his vision for digital learning materials, explains the details of the…

This article is an analysis of "Performance Improvement Quarterly" (PIQ) for the years 2001-2010. The intent was to examine the article types used, the authors who contributed the most to the journal, the topics the journal most commonly focused on, and the citation frequency of the journal's articles. The analysis revealed that…

"Cloud computing is a model for the enabling of ubiquitous, convenient, and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and other services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." This somewhat…

The Professors of Instructional Design and Technology (PIDT) conference has been successful since 1985 at providing an opportunity for professors and their advanced doctoral students to learn and grow in ways not possible at traditional conferences. This article reports on the 2012 annual meeting and summarizes the history of PIDT, as gleaned by…

MPublishing, the primary academic publishing enterprise of the University of Michigan, has united the various publishing activities of the university, all of which serve the needs of scholars and the university by fostering new publishing models that cannot exist where profit is the primary value. This article provides a brief description of…

Technology has enabled a proliferation of publication venues for disseminating academic work. The task of evaluating the relative quality of each of these venues is simultaneously exacerbated and resolved by the use of new technologies. In this article, the authors propose a three-pronged framework for evaluating the quality of scholarly work that…

In this article, the authors describe an open-source, open-data digital infrastructure for sharing information about open educational resources (OERs) across disparate systems and platforms. The Learning Registry, which began as a project funded by the U.S. Departments of Education and Defense, currently has an active international community…

The American Academy of Religion, in concert with the Sakai Foundation, has envisioned a scholarly use of the new Sakai Open Academic Environment open-source software. Currently working under the title "Biosphere," the program would put a rich collection of collaborative tools in the hands of AAR members, their colleagues in related scholarly…

Proposals for the development of open scholarship seem to offer a utopian vision of a democratic, participative educational future. However, a closer examination of the idea of scholarship shows that the use of technology is nothing new in this context--its involvement dates back decades, and its use varies in important ways from discipline to…