One hundred years ago, Paul Weiss and Ludwig von Bertalanffy independently proposed that living organisms interact with their environment through systems. In the century that has followed, systems thinking and modeling have grown in tandem with discovery of the vast complexity of the universe at microscopic through astronomic levels. As our…

Designing within a system is ubiquitous to instructional design. In order to understand the systemic impact of design decisions within an organization, one must understand the interrelatedness of the objects within the system. Developing an understanding of context as it relates to the utility of instructional design solutions will position…

The abrupt emergence and rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, transitioning from research labs to potentially all aspects of social life, has brought a profound impact on education, science, arts, journalism, and every facet of human life and communication. The purpose of this paper is to recapitulate the use…

Systemic change is far more difficult than piecemeal reforms because it requires far more interrelated and interdependent sets of changes to occur. Systemic change has two potential areas of failure: (1) the change process (action) may never reach full implementation of the new system, and (2) the new system (vision) may not be well designed. This…

Underutilized in higher education, soft systems thinking can mitigate common challenges in implementing instructional design and technology initiatives. A valuable approach is soft systems methodology (SSM), which captures multiple stakeholder perspectives in rich pictures and activity models to support structured conversations about how to…

In "Restructuring Education Through Technology," I incorporated systems thinking to identify seven types of relationships in educational systems: teacher-student, student-content, student-context, teacher-content, teacher-context, content-context, and education system-environment relationships (Frick 1991). I now revisit these education…

Change is a constant presence within today's higher education institutions. Local faculty professional development opportunities may provide avenues for enacting these organizational changes through personal continuous improvement. While working to meet these organizational priorities, it is also essential that professional development must…

As part of a consulting initiative to guide a workforce development board in the design of a strategic plan, the authors created instruction integrating systems thinking and design thinking for the board and staff. The purpose of this instruction was to foster participant engagement in a holistic approach to the development of a strategic plan for…

This position paper highlights the mainstream educational communications and technology (ECT) research and development community's continued lack of interest towards issues located at the intersection of digital media technologies and LGBTQI stakeholders, providing evidence and commentary in this regard. The paper goes on to articulate a rationale…

It is important for all Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) members to understand the ways society is changing as people evolve deeper into the information age, and to recognize that these changes require a change in paradigm for education and training systems to be most effective in meeting the needs of individuals…

This paper presents several brief papers about the process of systemic change. These are: (1) Step-Up-To-Excellence: A Protocol for Navigating Whole-System Change in School Districts by Francis M. Duffy; (2) The Guidance System for Transforming Education by Charles M. Reigeluth; (3) The Schlechty Center For Leadership In School Reform by Monica…

This article presents seven vignettes that focus on what technology specialists, instructional designers, teacher trainers, teachers, parents, corporate trainers and performance technologists can do to create positive and systemic change in education. These include: (1) "What Technology Specialists Can Do," by Brian Beabout; (2) "What…

This article presents new systems produced by systemic change. First is Systemic Changes in the Chugach School District by Wendy Battino and Jo Clem. Second is Systemic Changes in Public Schools through Brain-Based Learning by Renate N. Caine. Third is A Vision of an Information-Age Educational System by Charles M. Reigeluth. Fourth is Systemic…

This section describes the systemic change experiences in Norfolk Public Schools, Chugach School District, Indianapolis Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, Ditmas Educational Complex, Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program, Sun Microsystems, and Azerbaijan. It provides a description of the change process and discusses the…

In higher education, a university is typically loosely coupled with its suprasystems, but its various schools or colleges tend to be tightly coupled with the university, as are departments with their respective schools or colleges. Similarly, in the corporate sector, a training department is typically tightly coupled with the company management…