Instructional designers are increasingly looking beyond the field's mainstream approaches to achieve desired outcomes. They seek more creative forms of design to help them invent more imaginative experiences that better reflect their vision and ideals. This essay is addressed to designers who are attracted to these expanded visions of their…

While successful instructional innovation is the result of efforts of individual faculty and instructional support staff, it is also influenced by institutional and contextual factors that include personal characteristics, pedagogies, curricula, and other tangible and intangible dynamics. These same forces can also work in concert to assure…

The authors present this interview with Joshua Kim, Director of Digital Learning Initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL). Dr. Kim leads Dartmouth College's efforts around online learning and digital innovation for teaching and learning. He is a well-known conference speaker and consultant in the area of…

This article describes initial success in developing an interdisciplinary studio for teaching collaborative creativity and design, with faculty from multiple departments co-teaching and co-mentoring interdisciplinary student groups engaged in social innovation. The rationale for developing this studio has been to prepare students for the kind of…

Education cannot adopt the linear model of scaling used by the medical sciences. "Gold standards" cannot be replicated without considering process-in-learning, diversity, and student-variedness in classrooms. This article proposes a nuanced model of educational scaling-and-diffusion, describing the scaling (top-down supports) and…

In this article, the authors present an example of a project-based course within a studio environment that taught collaborative innovation skills and produced an open-source project management textbook for the field of instructional design and technology. While innovation plays an important role in our economy, and many have studied how to teach…

While instructional design's technological roots have given it many approaches for process and product improvement, in most cases designers still rely on instructional forms that do not allow them to develop instruction of a quality consistent with that expressed by the field's visionary leaders. As a result, often the teachers and students using…

Although today's unprecedented advancements in technology ought to serve as a springboard for innovations in teaching and learning, practices in many schools in the United States and around the globe remain unchanged. Indeed, Europe, too has struggled with this challenge. Using European technology initiatives as points of reflection, the authors…

Paradoxically some "extreme" didactic needs, such as those of students who are unable to attend normal education regularly (e.g., hospitalized and/or homebound students), have shown themselves to be ideal for the development of a teaching style aimed at stimulating the active role of the student, at fostering a learning process based…

The diffusion of innovation is critical to societal progression. In the field of education, such diffusion takes on added significance because of the many stakeholders and accountabilities involved. This article presents the argument that efforts at diffusion which are designed from a top-down perspective are not sustainable over the long term…

Working Examples (WEx) is described by the authors as a vehicle for ideating and building radical innovations to change education. It is a community of researchers, designers, and educators working at the intersection of education and technology. "Examples" (ideas, work, and projects) allow people to explore new ideas, learn from each…

Higher education institutions have been playing a pivotal role in the emergence and elaboration of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. Initially, pioneering institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have led the conceptualization of OER, providing models of sustainable initiatives. Following the forerunners,…

The 2016 National Educational Technology Plan mentions fostering creativity, collaboration, leadership, and critical thinking while engaging learners in complex, real-world challenges through a project-based learning approach (see http://tech.ed.gov/netp/learn ing/). The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21; see…

Rising costs, perceived declining value, and weak evidence of quality outcomes bedevil contemporary higher education. One innovation intended to address these problems is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This article recommends that the educational technology community and others get REAL about MOOCs by focusing more serious effort on…

Most current debate on instructional technology is characterized either by grandiose speculation on the salvation of education through automation (without specification of "what" and "how" technological innovations will actually be introduced in specific classroom situations, and how the changes will be financed), or by jargon-filled hairsplitting…