Syllabus: Click here to view the syllabus.
Grades: BYU’s Gradebook will be used to manage grades.
Office Hours: Virtually & face-to-face on Mondays, 2-4 p.m. or by appointment.
Course Readings: See a full list of required and recommended readings in my Mendeley collection. In that collection I have articles organized as “required” or “optional/recommended”. The required ones we will discuss in class and will be required for grading purposes. The recommended ones are just great articles on the topics we’ll discuss that would be good to know about and read if you have time.
Course Description & Objectives
What is this field you are entering anyway? What is its history? What are the pressing issues? What do you need to know and be able to do to be successful in it?
These are questions that you probably have as you begin graduate work in our department. These are the questions we will try to answer this semester! By the end, It is my hope that you will:
- Understand the history of the field of Instructional Technology, including the various trends, people, and issues that shaped it.
- Understand the current issues, discussions, research, and debates in this field as well as comparable sister professions.
- Clarify and define your own professional trajectory into your profession including your personal beliefs; the kind of career you are seeking; and the skills, knowledge, and characteristics you need to develop to be successful.
- Begin to develop skills in literature analysis and scholarly writing.
- Create an initial professional web presence that you can develop during your career.
- Begin defining for yourself what the future of our field is or may be, and what your role may be in that future.
Warning! Do not deceive yourself into thinking you will know everything (or even most things) that you need to know about these topics after this course. This is a survey course and we will briefly survey many of the relevant issues in our field. After this course, you should be a “jack of all trades, but a master of none.” However, you’ll at least have a roadmap to where you can learn more in the areas you want to specialize in.
Course Policies
Course policies, assignments, and deadlines are subject to change according to our needs.
Late & Makeup Work
Due dates for assignments are listed on the calendar. A minimum 10% late penalty will be assessed for work submitted after the assignment deadline unless I have previously approved a later deadline due to extenuating circumstances. Work that is submitted over a week late will receive an additional 10% penalty for each week late. No late work is accepted after the last class meeting.
Backing Up Work
It is your responsibility to back up all of the work you do in class, saving it in at least TWO locations until you receive your final course grade. To do this you can use: 1) your required USB key drive, 2) home computer, 3) email attachments, 4) free online space (such as http://www.box.net), or 5) external hard drive. If you need motivation for backing up your work, ask me about the time I lost over half of my literature review to a computer failure a few weeks before my thesis was due. Ah, the memories. ;-).
Course Grading & Honesty Policy
Final grades will be calculated with the following percentages. You must complete ALL assignments to get a passing grade. You must honestly complete all the individual work yourself. If you are working within a team, you must be able to show a significant contribution to the team project.
A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- F
94-100 90-93 87-89 83-86 80-82 77-79 73-76 70-72 0-69
Electronic Devices
As a courtesy to everyone, please turn off cell phones during class and use laptops only for taking notes or looking up materials relevant to our discussion. Checking email, Facebook, and other off-task sites diminishes your ability to learn and my ability to teach, and is distracting to the other learners in class.