Abstract
This exploratory study investigated what faculty and current students in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) programs perceive as indicators of an exemplary program. We surveyed a sample of the faculty and students and asked them to identify the most important indicators of an exemplary program and rank their own programs according to those indicators. We contacted programs from 11 different countries, though the majority of contacted programs were from the United States of America. We coded and analyzed the respondents’ 941 indicator statements and created 35 thematic indicators. The frequency and percentage of occurrence of these themes across the programs for both faculty and students were analyzed. Their mean rating of their programs for each theme was also calculated. The paper presents the results of this analysis and examines the differences across students/faculty and program types. The findings of this survey, albeit limited due to the low response rate, could benefit IDT programs in terms of performance improvement and assist students by offering criteria by which they can select a graduate program.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Becker, W. E., Dundar, H., & Toutkoushian, R. K. (1998). The National Research Council graduate program ratings: what are they measuring? The Review of Higher Education, 21(4), 427–443. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.1998.0014.
Bethlehem, J. (2010). Selection bias in web surveys. International Statistical Review, 78(2), 161–188. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-5823.2010.00112x.
Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Floden, R. E. (2012). Teacher value added as a measure of program quality interpret with caution. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(5), 356–360. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112454175.
Gilbert, T. (1978). Human competence: Engineering worthy performance. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Haydarov, R., Moxley, V., & Anderson, D. (2013). Counting chickens before they are hatched: An examination of student retention, graduation, attrition, and dropout measurement validity in an online master’s environment. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 14(4), 429–449. https://doi.org/10.2190/CS.14.4.a.
Hilmer, M. J., & Hilmer, C. E. (2011). Is it where you go or who you know? On the relationship between students, Ph. D. program quality, dissertation advisor prominence, and early career publishing success. Economics of Education Review, 30(5), 991–996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2011.04.013.
Ishida, Y., Hosoya, Y., Sata, N., Yasuda, Y., & Lefor, A. T. (2012). Educational factors outweigh the importance of lifestyle factors for residency program applicants: An international comparative study. Journal of Surgical Education, 69(2), 167–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2011.07.009.
Ku, H. Y. (2009). Twenty years of productivity in ETR&D by institutions and authors. Educational Technology Research and Development, 57(6), 801–805. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-009-9138-5.
Larson, M. B. (2005). Instructional design career environments: Survey of the alignment of preparation and practice. Tech Trends, 49(6), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02763727.
Little, S. G. (1997). Graduate education of the top contributors to the school psychology literature: 1987–1995. School Psychology International, 18(1), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034397181002.
McGaghie, W. C., & Thompson, J. A. (2001). America’s best medical schools: A critique of the US News & World Report rankings. Academic Medicine, 76(10), 985–992. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-200110000-00005.
Moore, A. L., & Klein, J. D. (2015). Live and learn: Informal learning among future professionals. Performance Improvement, 54(9), 19–26. https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.21530.
Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Picciano, J., & Nerad, M. (2011a). Are you satisfied? PhD education and faculty taste for prestige: Limits of the prestige value system. Research in Higher Education, 52(1), 24–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9184-1.
Morrison, E., Rudd, E., Zumeta, W., & Nerad, M. (2011b). What matters for excellence in PhD programs? Latent constructs of doctoral program quality used by early career social scientists. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(5), 535–563. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2011.0029.
Morse, R., Brooks, E., & Mason, M. (2015). How US News calculated the 2016 best colleges rankings. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings?page=2.
Nerad, M., & Miller, D. S. (1996). Increasing student retention in graduate and professional programs. New Directions for Institutional Research, 1996(92), 61–76. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.37019969207.
Orey, M., & Branch, R. M. (Eds.). (2015). Educational media and technology yearbook (Vol. 39). New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14188-6_17.
Thomas, D. R. (2006). A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. American Journal of Evaluation, 27(2), 237–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214005283748.
Yudkowsky, R., Elliott, R., & Schwartz, A. (2002). Two perspectives on the indicators of quality in psychiatry residencies: Program directors’ and residents’. Academic Medicine, 77(1), 57–64. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-200201000-00014.
Funding
The authors received no funding for this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Arrington, T.L., Darabi, A. Indicators of exemplary programs in instructional design and technology: faculty and student perspectives. Education Tech Research Dev 66, 173–189 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-017-9561-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-017-9561-y