Psychological Perspectives on Emerging Instructional Technologies: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

Emerging instructional technologies have been much heralded, but often for the wrong reasons. The potential of emerging technologies stems not simply from technologically advanced capabilities, but from the ability to vary instructional methods and media systematically according to the cognitive demands of learning tasks. The goal of this article is to illustrate how research and theory from psychology, education, and related fields can be integrated within five generic instructional phases to guide the design process.