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The first school museum opened in St. Louis.
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The term “visual education” appeared with Keystone View Company’s teacher’s guide to slides and stereographs.
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The first U.S. catalog of instructional films published; Rochester, NY became the first school system to adopt films for regular instruction.
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The visual instruction movement expanded, with national organizations, journals, and training programs founded.
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Three national visual instruction organizations merged into the Department of Visual Instruction (DVI), later known as AECT.
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Publication of Visualizing the Curriculum, a key textbook that influenced audiovisual education.
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Psychologists and educators (e.g., Gagné, Briggs, Flanagan) developed training materials and testing methods for the U.S. military, laying the foundation for instructional design
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Organizations like the American Institutes for Research advanced task analysis and system-based training approaches, exemplified by Robert B. Miller’s work
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Massive use of audiovisual media for military and civilian training; U.S. Army Air Force produced 400+ training films and 600 filmstrips.
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Renewed school interest in audiovisual devices and the rise of media research (e.g., Lumsdaine’s studies).
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Ford Foundation invested over $170 million in educational television projects.
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Early computer-assisted instruction (CAI) projects such as PLATO and TICCIT developed but had little school impact.
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The U.S. FCC reserved 242 television channels for education, boosting instructional television.
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B.F. Skinner’s publications introduced programmed instruction, emphasizing small steps, immediate feedback, and self-pacing, core elements of systematic instructional design
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Sputnik’s launch triggered U.S. investment in science education. Failures of early materials led Michael Scriven (1967) to propose formative vs. summative evaluation
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Gagné, Glaser, Silvern, Banathy, and others integrated task analysis, objectives, and testing into the first systematic instructional design models
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Questioning whether computers improve learning due to their medium or to embedded instructional methods, a discussion that continues to impact educational technology research.
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Robert Mager’s Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruction (1962) sold over 1.5 million copies, making behavioral objectives central to instructional planning
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Robert Gagné introduced five learning domains, nine instructional events, and hierarchical task analysis, which became cornerstones of instructional design models
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Personal computing, interactive video, and constructivist tools such as Papert’s LOGO empowered learner exploration and creativity, while intelligent tutoring systems (e.g., SCHOLAR, Geometry Tutor) introduced AI-driven adaptive guidance (Papert, 1980; Anderson et al., 1985; Sleeman Brown, 1982).
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Terminology shifted from “audiovisual instruction” to educational technology or instructional technology; DVI became AECT.
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While impact on schools was limited, cognitive psychology gained influence, and microcomputers transformed instructional design into computer-based learning
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Microcomputers entered schools; by 1983, 40% of elementary and 75% of secondary schools used them.
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Blackboard and WebCT transformed content delivery and interaction, with the theory of transactional distance emphasizing structured online learning to reduce pedagogical gaps (Moore, 1993; Weller, 2020; Bozkurt, 2020).
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The field broadened with performance technology, constructivist principles, electronic performance support systems, rapid prototyping, Internet-based distance learning, and knowledge management
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U.S. schools had on average one computer per nine students, but computers had minimal impact on instruction.
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Rapid rise of the Internet and digital technology in education, business, and the military; distance learning nearly doubled in higher education between 1994–1998.
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Survey showed one computer per six students in U.S. schools and 90% of schools connected to the Internet.
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Online learning expanded via MOOCs and flipped classrooms, while Connectivism framed learning as a networked process, and ITS research matured with Cognitive Tutors demonstrating gains comparable to human tutoring (Siemens, 2005; Koedinger Corbett, 2006; VanLehn, 2011; Akçayır Akçayır, 2018).
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E-Learning
Blended Learning
Mobile Learning, Gamification, and Facebook
Pedagogy -
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Data-driven personalization, learning analytics, and AI (including affective computing and multimodal systems) extended educational technology beyond cognitive modeling.
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Mobile Devices in Learning
Social Media
Understanding Teacher Attitudes
Gamification
Flipped Classrooms
MOOCs
Augmented and Virtual Reality -
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The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital and hybrid education, while AI tools such as ChatGPT became prominent in classrooms for tutoring and writing support (Bond et al., 2021; Zhou et al., 2024).