Well, it has been 17 years since I received my Masters Degree in Instructional Design and Techonogy from the University of Iowa! Now enrolled in this class at Boise State, I realize that I hadn’t been doing much literature reading in the ID area in quite some time!
As I was reading through the Games and Simulations in Online Learning text, it was good to see the names I remembered so well…Reigeluth (now and Schwartz, what happened to Stein?), Merril, Gagne, Chohen and Ball, Piaget, Gardner, Kolb, and especially, Alessi — my former professor at the University of Iowa. There were some new names and more recent dates, but I felt a little better that the field had not been totally replaced by new theories!
What was I doing all these years while I wasn’t reading ID journals? I guess I was learning Visual Studio.NET, passing the CCNA exam, and video podcasting! 🙂
I started to read the Learning by Doing book first for two reasons: I could immediately download a e-Book for $13 more dollars, it came to my door first. I really do prefer the hard-copy of the book to the e-book. Don’t know if that will ever change! I was reading it sequentially, even when the author suggested I had multiple paths I could choose. Then, I thought I would throw caution to the wind and actually follow a path of my interest. After all, he had given me “permission!” That was such a refreshing change. I did eventually come back to the next chapter in sequence, but did “enjoy the ride” pursuing my interests more in depth.