Developing Prescriptive Taxonomies for Distance Learning Instructional Design

Abstract

There are simple answers to all complex problems—and they are uniformly wrong. —H.L. Mencken One of the central problems and corresponding challenges facing the multidisciplinary fields of distance learning and instructional design has been in the construction of theory-grounded, research-based taxonomies for prescribing what particular strategies and approaches should be employed when, how, and in what combination to be most effective and efficient for teaching specific knowledge domains and performance outcomes. While numerous scholars and practitioners across a wide range of associated instructional design fields have created a rich variety of effective, efficient, and very current prescriptions for obtaining specific learning outcomes in specific situations (Anderson & Elloumi, 2004; Marzano, 2000; Merrill, 2002a; Nelson & Stolterman, 2003; Reigeluth, 1999a; Shedroff, 1999; Wiley, 2002), to date no single theory-grounded and research-verified unifying taxonomic scheme has successfully emerged to address all existing and potential educational problems across the phenomena of human learning and performance.