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The First School Museum
The first school museum that was established in St. Louis. This museum became the first of many to come as an institution that established a learning environment to provide teaching instruction. It featured portable museum exhibits and presented a functional similarity to present day school district centers. -
Visual Education Movement
The Visual Education/Visual Instruction movement was characterized by the increased use of visual technology (which included: magic lanterns, stereopticons, motion picture projectors, and instructional films) and began in 1908 for educational purposes. The movement proceeded into the mid-1920's where advances in audio technology caused the movement to change into the audiovisual instruction movement. -
Sidney Pressey Presents The First Teaching Machine
Sidney Pressey is credited for inventing the first teaching machine, and introducing what is now known as programmed instruction. He claimed that the machine, that he called the Automatic Teacher, was a labor saver as it removed the burden that teachers had when grading standardized tests. On top of automatically grading, he claimed that the machine could teach as well. -
Bloom's Taxonomy
Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues published the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, which detailed various learning outcomes, how learning objectives could be determined based on the different learner behaviors they applied to, and the hierarchical relationship between the different types of outcomes. -
Rise of Cognitivism
In response to behaviorist theories by Skinner that emphasized only observable behaviors, many theorists and researchers began increasing their focus on the internal mechanisms of learning. For instance, the theory of short-and long term memory, differences between individuals, and the way learners remember, arrange and retrieve information, which started to influence instructional design practices. -
Electronic Performance Support Systems
In the early 90's, the popularity of electronic performance support systems increased, which resulted in a shift in the activities of many instructional designers. Instead of simply producing training, they were now designing computerized systems that simulated actual work situations.